Are You Valid?

This isn't happening slowly any more. But the scarey thing is that nobody really cares.

Gattaca (1997), a scarily accurate screen portrayal of a near future where a genetically programmed elite, rule became all the nearer with the news that there are three million DNA records held by the police in Britain. Today it emerges that 24,000 of them are of children who have been arrested but then neither cautioned nor prosecuted.

They can be held indefinitely at the discretion of Chief Constables. The police and Home Office say it helps solve crime. Civil libertarians and parents of some of the children on the database say it is appalling.

We seem to be heading towards a national DNA database before too long - within a few years millions more of us will be on it anyway either having volunteered (to eliminate themselves from investigations) or having been arrested.

More hereand here.