Reading report

Name: Cristina Soledad Guzmán
Date:September 19
Title: Police must not store DNA details of the innocent - report
Source: www.guardian.co.uk Date of publication: Tuesday September 18, 2007

Vocabulary

Database: 1. A collection of data arranged for ease of search and retrieval.
Littering: 6. To make untidy by discarding rubbish carelessly.
7. To scatter about; strew.
Speeding: 6. To move or cause to move rapidly. 7. To increase the speed or rate of; accelerate. 8. To drive at a speed exceeding a legal limit.
Convened: 1. To meet or assemble formally. 2. To convoke.
Acquitted: 1. Law. To free from a charge or accusation. 2. To discharge from a duty. 3. To conduct (oneself) in a specified manner.
Convicted: 1. To find or prove guilty of an offense or crime.
Spokesperson: 1. a person who speaks on behalf of another or others.
Rape: 1. The crime of forcing a person to submit to sexual intercourse.
Feedback: 1. a. The return of a portion of the output of a process or system to the input. b. The portion of the output so returned. 2. An evaluative response.

Main ideas

¨ Government must prevent police from storing the profiles of innocent people on the British national DNA database.
¨ Innocent people are concerned about how their DNA might be used if it is kept without their consent.
¨ The national DNA database has details of almost 4 million people arrested for recordable offences.
¨ Present laws allow police to take DNA samples from anyone who has been arrested without asking permission.
¨ The Home Office said that maintaining records of people who where innocent at the time had helped solve crimes years later.
¨ Proposals to expand police powers to take DNA samples from people arrested of non-recordable offences was made in March.
¨ Some say that in a DNA database containing records of everyone would remove issues of discrimination.

Personal reaction

This article is about a controversial issue in the U.K. about the store of DNA information in the police database.
Many people think that this storing should not be expanded to innocent people without their consent.
Police affirms that maintaining records of people who were innocent at the time had helped solve crimes years later.
I think that in what respect to crime solving, the use of DNA information is the most effective technique developed to identify criminals. But it is also important that to keep these personal information without the consent of people that had been declared innocent may be a way of sensorship that is why they consider to be suspicious the use that police and government can make of this information.