Hattix

Some recent high profile criminal investigations in which DNA evidence has played a key role (e.g. Mark Dixie, Steve Wright) have brought up the suggestion of a national DNA database, citing examples where if DNA had been on file, the guilty party would have been identified and caught much sooner, possibly averting a future offence, perhaps even saving lives.

Arguing against that is going to be extremely difficult but it must be done. It is fingerprinting the entire population from birth. It’s more than just fingerprinting, since two fingerprints can be very similar, it’s taking your very identity and storing it on file.

The problem is that the current paradigm is “if your DNA was there, so were you” when this is not the case. Let’s say I want to kill someone. I’m careful about it, I wear rubber gloves which I then incinerate, etc. I also leave a few traces of someone else’s hair there. Maybe I sat behind them on the bus and just picked it up from the seat. That someone is then convicted of murder on DNA evidence, I walk free.

Right now, DNA is taken on the successful conviction of an offence (actually, it’s taken during prosecution, but must be destroyed if the prosecution fails) and it covers four and half million Britons, or one in every thirteen of us. Yes, even petty theft or a drunken brawl.

Detective Superintendant Cundy, who headed the investigation into Mike Bowman’s conviction of murder, claimed that “a national DNA register - with all its appropriate safeguards - could have identified Sally Anne’s murderer within 24 hours” and we’re left wondering what those safeguards may be. The police got their man and successfully prosecuted him, is it really necessary to fingerprint us all to save a few days or weeks of an investigation?

What if we fall under the hands of an oppressive government, such as the BNP, who would use such information to racially profile people who could then be deported or otherwise oppressed? What if eugenics comes back into vogue, as it was in the mid-20th century, and you’re found to be a carrier of a genetic disease and barred from having children? That’s a “what if” scenario and, in democracy, the “what ifs” are the most important questions.

It can’t be allowed to happen, we cannot predict the actions of a future government. We must always assume the worst if we have any hope of defending ourselves from it. We must not give power to the government which they can abuse, it is our only mechanism of ensuring they do not abuse it.

Under the guise of destroying a potentially hazardous satellite, the United States successfully tested an anti-satellite missile west of Hawaii early this morning. While the official line from the White House was that the ailing spy satellite, USA 193, was a public hazard, few doubt that the test was in response to a similar Chinese test in 2007 which the US publically condemned.

The satellite never achieved functionality and so could not maintain orbit, it was due to re-enter uncontrolled in March, where it potentially could have caused damage. This is nothing new, spent rocket casings and old satellites re-enter twenty or more times a year, so why were the US so interested in this one? The official public line is that the hydrazine in the satellite’s fuel tanks was a danger to public health and indeed this is true, but satellites with hydrazine have come down before (one a year or so) and there’s been no missile shooting at them, the overwhelming odds are that the satellite with ditch harmlessly in an ocean, usually the Pacific. Being so volatile, the hydrazine escapes harmlessly into the atmosphere in just a few hours. You don’t want to be breathing it, but it doesn’t persist very long in the environment anyway.

Word on the street is that USA 193 wasn’t your ordinary Hubble Space Telescope pointed down (indeed, most spy satellites are quite similar to HST in construction, just far more advanced and much more expensive), instead a testbed for new technologies. It’d be quite embarrassing for the US were such a satellite to re-enter over China or Russia, allowing them to access its programming (was it really going to peek on Russian military secrets?) and technology. The risk to public health was acceptable, this thing has happened before, but the risk in giving away spy technology secrets to rival nations was not acceptable.

Pretending to care about public well-being is just easier for the politicians to say.

So being the local astronomy type, I’m often asked what I think of NASA’s Ares project. The aim is to put men back on the Moon and eventually to Mars. It’s the same as Apollo, a complete joke that we’ll fly and forget. Strong words, I’ll have to justify those.

In the early stages of Apollo, many within NASA strongly believed that the eventual aim was to build a lunar residency, a full time base on the Moon. Automated versions of the Lunar Module (LM) were kicked around and a smaller rocket to launch it, a step down from the Saturn V, since the Command and Service Modules wouldn’t be required to support human habitation for a week, just to be big cargo containers. After President Kennedy’s vision was realised, when Armstrong stepped out of the Tranquility Base LM, the political climate had shifted remarkably.

The support for Apollo petered off, even a few voices in NASA said “Okay, we’ve done it, let’s not tempt fate until someone gets killed.” Even Congressmen asked why it cost 40 million dollars to design and build a “golf cart”, grossly misunderstanding that said “golf cart” had to be built from scratch to operate in an airless environment with absolute reliability, it had to be tested, astronauts trained with it and by then, that 40 million was looking to be a very good deal; The Ford Mustang of the same vintage cost twice that to develop and design while modern cars cost even more, even if adjusted for inflation.

What started as a bold plan for long term lunar habitation became ten missions and finally only seven were flown, three of them fully built and ready but without the political support and national bravery to send them into the unknown.

Ares will be exactly the same thing. A few training and testing missions to the Moon, maybe two or three to Mars, then it’ll all be nudged under the carpet and referenced only in history books, paradoxically mentioning ‘national pride’ when the lack of that pride condemned the programme to history.

Ares might not even happen at all. While the military could afford quite easily to spend two billion dollars every ten hours in killing Iraqis, the budget for NASA just isn’t there. We’re still at the stage Apollo was at when they were picturing that automated LM and long term lunar bases, the stage where great things will happen, the stage before financial commitments are cut and political support evaporates.

In a somewhat unexpected decision, five students jailed for ‘terrorism’ have been released on appeal and their convictions quashed. In a typical hysteria-fueled conviction, these men were jailed for, get this and I am not making it up, “downloading and sharing extremist terrorism-related material”. That’s right. They did nothing and indeed they argued they had no intention to.

The prosecution summarily failed to link them to any planning or intention of acts of terrorism, yet somehow they were still convicted under a spineless anti-British law, the Terrorism Act 2000, where section 57 makes it a crime to simply posess or digest material that could be useful to terrorists. Legal representatives for the five stated that section 57 was so vaguely written that it could apply to absolutely anyone.

This verdict, handed down by the Lord Chief Justice of the Court of Appeal, effectively invalidates section 57 of the Terrorism Act 2000 and, on behalf of the British people, I’d like to thank the court. It’s a fundamental right any Briton should enjoy that he may read, disseminate and research anything he so chooses without fear of government interference and the Court of Appeal has reinforced that right.

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Carlile, responsible for independent review of terrorism laws and legal frameworks welcomed the verdict, stating that nobody should be convicted of a crime “for mere thoughts, mere fantasies, mere wishes - even for their reading matter”. This now means that prosecutors must prove intent to carry out or support in the planning of an act of terrorism, rather than just dig dirt from a hard disk.

Maybe freedom isn’t dead after all.

Alright, before I get started with this one, let me make one thing absolutely clear: Sharia law is an abomination.

 Now then, on to the whole Archbishop of Canterbury’s comments. He’s not out of line at all in saying that elements of Sharia are “unavoidable” in the British legal system. We face an increasingly rabid Islamic fundamentalist population and for the most part, our Anglican churches are on the moderate side of over-conservative. We’re a democracy and Islamic groups have proven more than willing to use democracy to elect their own candidates who have agendas more fitting with Islamic idealism.

 The reaction has been, in essence, hysteria and a disgrace to the nation. Political rivalry and posturing means bandwagonners are rapidly jumping to condemn Dr Williams but this is just a symptom of the larger problem.

We allow too much religious interference in our political process.

“Too much” of course being “any at all”. Any church, any faith, has no place at all in politics. That the Archbishop of Canterbury gets to sit in the House of Lords is as much an abomination as Sharia law is and it puts on too much pressure for the church having to conform to whatever political leaning is in effect at the time.

Col. Armitstead, Synod from the diocese of Bath and Wells is quoted saying “One wants to be charitable, but I sense that he would be far happier in a university where he can kick around these sorts of ideas.” This is simply another symptom of the disease infecting our government, that the church leaders can’t kick around those ideas, so to speak, because of their political duties. Duties they should not have.

 It’s time we threw all religious groups out of parliament and let politicians do the job of politicians, priests do the job of priests.