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Content type: Long Read
27th March 2019
(In order to click the hyperlinks in the explainer below, please download the pdf version at the bottom of the page).
Content type: News & Analysis
21st February 2014
Political activist and university lecturer Tadesse Kersmo believed that he was free from intrusive surveillance when he was granted political asylum in the UK. Instead, he was likely subject to more surveillance than ever. His case underlines the borderless nature of advanced surveillance technologies and why it represents such a massive problem.
In the past, those fleeing conflict or persecution could reasonably expect a degree of respite if they managed to escape their circumstances. However…
Content type: News & Analysis
31st January 2006
The UK currently maintains the largest DNA Database in the world and is encouraging other governments to implement similar systems in their respective countries. Using international organisations such as Interpol, participant governments will be able to share and exchange the DNA profiles of their citizens subject to vague legislative provisions, such as 'the interests of crime detection and prevention'.
Background
The successful prosecution of a serial sex offender in 2004 led to…
Content type: News & Analysis
31st January 2006
The Criminal Justice Act 2003 further widens the circumstances in which a non-intimate sample may be taken from an individual. The Act merely requires that in order to take a non-intimate sample without consent, a person is arrested for a recordable offence - a significant advancement on the requirement that the individual was charged with a recordable offence and one that will encompass countless more individuals.
Section 10 of the CJA 2003 alters the taking of non-intimate samples, but in a…
Content type: News & Analysis
30th January 2006
The most significant amendment of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 (hereafter 'CJPA') is the amendment to the circumstances in which samples may be retained. The Act allows for retention of samples even where charges are dropped or the individual is cleared of the offence. It also allows for such samples to be used for (future) purposes related to the detection and prevention of crime, both in the UK and abroad.
In relation to the taking of samples, the CJPA 2001 amends PACE by…
Content type: News & Analysis
27th January 2006
Although DNA matching was first used to catch an offender in 1987, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 is instrumental in defining police treatment of suspects in the early stages of an investigation. Despite the fact that the Act has been amended on numerous occasions since its inception, analysis of the original legislation provides the starting point to map out the development and expansion of the circumstances in which samples containing DNA can be taken from individuals.
This early…
Content type: News & Analysis
29th January 2009
Two months ago, the UK Borders Agency began fingerprinting foreign children over six years old, from outside the European Economic Area and resident in Britain. At the time Jacqui Smith was congratulated for her tough line on issuing identity cards to foreign residents and no one, not even parliament, noticed that the biometric requirements applied to children of six. And parliament didn't know because it was never asked to approve the policy.
Nowhere in the world are you more powerless than…
Content type: News & Analysis
10th July 2019
Today, the British Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced a partnership between the NHS and Amazon to use the NHS’s website content as the source for the answer given to medical question, such as “Alexa, how do I treat a migraine?”
While we welcome Amazon’s use of a trusted source of information for medical queries, we are however extremely concerned about the nature and the implications of this partnership. Amazon is a company with a worrying track record when it comes to the way they…
Content type: News & Analysis
31st January 2006
A campaign to eliminate the DNA profiles of 24,000 innocent juveniles from the database has been instigated by a Conservative Member of Parliament after a lengthy battle to remove the record of a concerned constituent’s son who was arrested as a result of misidentification. The National DNA Database currently holds the records of 750,000 juveniles – some of whom have been convicted of offences but many of whom were only charged, cautioned, questioned or were mere witnesses to incidents.
The…
Content type: Long Read
11th March 2019
(In order to click the hyperlinks in the explainer below, please download the pdf version at the bottom of the page).
Content type: News & Analysis
17th August 2020
In the last few weeks, the UK government has announced various new measures to ensure that crossings across the Channel were “inviable” including by appointing a new role of “clandestine Channel threat commander" and further plans to deploy the navy to stop migrants from crossing to the UK from France across the Channel. Premature plans it seems, as not only would such measures be contrary to the UK’s international obligations to allow individuals to seek asylum in the UK, but also since such…
Content type: News & Analysis
15th January 2020
Today Advocate General (AG) Campos Sánchez-Bordona of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), issued his opinions (C-623/17, C-511/18 and C-512/18 and C-520/18) on how he believes the Court should rule on vital questions relating to the conditions under which security and intelligence agencies in the UK, France and Belgium could have access to communications data retained by telecommunications providers.
The AG addressed two major questions:
(1) When states seek to impose…