ABSTRACT
In September 2007, Lord Justice Stephen Sedley stirred controversy by suggesting that the National DNA Database (NDNAD) for England and Wales should be expanded to include DNA profiles from all residents and visitors to the UK. Critics objected that Sedley’s proposal ignored civil liberties and privacy concerns, and some raised the spectre of a ‘police state’. However, instead of citing the ‘security’ rationales that have been used in recent years to justify expansions of police powers, Sedley raised a civil liberties concern of his own. He noted that persons from ethnic minority groups, including many individuals who had not committed crimes, were significantly over-represented on the existing database (BBC News 2007). A de facto form of racial profiling was thus associated with the NDNAD, and a universal database would provide a fairer representation of the national population – giving everyone an equal chance of being caught in the web of hitech criminal investigations.2
