Tony Blair has insisted there should be no limits on the expansion of the national DNA database, saying it was vital for catching serious criminals.

Bad idea. Either he can't see where this leads or hasn't looked, or, it's going exactly to the place he (and others, not ourselves, of course) desire. As usual, who does he work for? Clearly not us.

In present times the underlying knowlege base in the genetic sciences is doing something awesome - in its hottest fields it's doubling every 11-to-12 months. And its practical applications are polygamously and variously marrying electronics, computung, communications, and nano tech, to name but a few of the continuously betrothed.

The results? Often staggering technical advances thrust into the hands of 'smart rocks' (politicians) and their handlers who do not consult you as constituents but increasingly treat you as an experimental ant colony out of which useful work and products can arise if properly managed. Are you feeling the love? Yeah, me too.

Look ahead just a handful of years. At some point something interesting is going to occur: such a DNA datbase is going to go "critical" i.e. like all other consumer identification databases, it's going to have enough info in it in terms of the numbers and percentages of children and the adult population tracked for it to go "digital green" i.e. it will be rich enough to be worth the effort to grow stuff on. Several events will then rapidly occur, having been planned and prepared for. Three for quick example:

(a) The database will be intentionally corrupted - both by those with official access and those without (it'll be like being able to alter or wipe your fingerprints in the FBI database.)

(b) Identity theft will occur, but with new twists. Sophisticated table-top, allowance-size DNA manipulation is now possible. Think forward even two years, add a crime syndicate budget, stir with a little imagination and lots of intent, cook to a fine aroma.

Then I can readily manufacture DNA helices to a wetware spec without spending a crime syndicates fortune, keep an eye on the current state of DNA evidence acceptance in the law, research a few expert witnesses, and then, iteratively, start manufacturing 'evidence' for my own or others crime forays (contracting is so much more efficient) - why I'll leave something that can be interpreted as, say, John Smith's deteriorated, but still taggable and readable DNA. And in my 'smart suit' and headgear, I won't leave any.

Rules of the road: When the law is against you, use the facts. when the facts are against you use the law. When both the facts and the law are against you, then attack the expert, change the facts or change the law (or its use and interpretation). In Will Smith's lyrics: "Get heavy 'wid it.'"

DNA databases carrying the heavy freight of not just a population's identity, but its individual genetic potentials will be ripe for changing more than a few "facts". Which brings us around to:

(c) Gravity. Honeypot. Easy to use. There for the taking. The information will be misused. By all the usual suspects and then some. And in ways that will hurt you personally, permanently, and some, terminally.

The insurance companies, for one, are dying to get their hands on this information. Last month Norwich Union, a giant insurance company in the UK, announced their (at first blush) voluntary "Black Box for Cars" program, where a black box the size of a videotape cassette talks GPS to an orbiting recon satellite telling it where you are and when you go from the moment your car is turned on (and turned off too for all I know).

NU is going to use this data to dynamically charge you insurance depending on where you drive, how long you stay, how you drive, and their view (not yours) of whether the places you've gone and folks you've visited are kosher (yes, they won't tell you that, but they'll cross-correlate and get that data too). Soon, they've already said, the program will be mandatory - if you want insurance from them. Trust me, the other insurance fellas will follow suit.

As and when (not if) they get their hands on your DNA data what's going to happen? Will they change their thinking habits? Yeah, I thought so too. A lot of you will be proscribed and/or denied health care. Period. Similarly expensive, life prolonging treatments ("your DNA's bad dear, it just isn't worth the expense, give someone else a chance"). And your costs will rise (cause you're all such perfect specimens not). Silent eugenics wll come into commercial play. Politics will have its ugly hands in complex rules and regulations that aren't designed to help you but, perhaps minimize and then wipe out "your kind". A little digital ethnic cleansing.

And powerful groups will cover up the dirty genetic secrets of their own families and kind, less they too be culled or come under serious negative scrutiny. Big employers will get that data one way or another. You can guess the rest. And see how an awful lot of grief and shi** can follow from technology doing the thinking for the smart rocks who presently lead us, or doing the dirty work for their handlers in their social engineering projects, especially as telling what ethnic stocks you arise from (religion not! ), for example, can now be done.

Think these are wild ideas? They're not even the scratching the surface. Consider this now several years old advertisement: "For $79.95, your TEN YEAR OLD can be the first on her block to explore DNA mapping on the kitchen table!  She'll be able to "extract, view, and map real DNA...," using tools such as a centrifuge, magnetic mixer, electrophoresis chamber, and more" - according to the Discovery Kids site HERE. Grown ups can buy more powerful stuff elsewhere. And online too. Right now.

If you're not accustomed to carrying around your master DNA blueprint on a piece of jewelry that doubles as a house key then get ready to do so by the year 2012. It's one of the 10 advances in Home Comfort and Convenience being forecast by Battelle.The results come from a survey of 48 Battelle technologists and business managers including representatives from the four national laboratories that Battelle manages and co-manages for the U.S. Department of Energy. And by the way, Batelle has one of the best technology prediction records ever.

The Prime Minister said the public were behind the controversial project as he urged police to make use of technological advances to solve thousands of "cold cases"

Good thinking. As far as it goes, which, as usual is about as far as he can reach. And that's not far enough. Just as in computing the present challenges have more and more to do with ways of writing better, faster, and more effective software that exploits the hardware, not building faster hardware, similarly, the crime issue is not, today, centrally about hard technologies.

It's also about process and 'software' where 'software' includes the best of social thinking and practice as well as effective ideas that have the police participating with the communities (for whom they are supposed to work) rather than the reverse with communities participating with the police in being the subordinate subjects for their policing.

Whenever we encounter technology as policy we've encountered a politician who believes money thinks )because they certainly can't) and is surely at the far ends of his (and his teams) creativity and openness in working for and with those who elected them.

During a tour of the Forensic Science Service Headquarters in central London, he said: "I think the politicians are more resistant (to the database) than the public. "I think the public think if this is helping us track down murderers, rapists... then go for it."

"I think they think.." Way too much thinking here. How about asking us what we feel and think, and what we want? That practice is so rare we would suspect fraud or a con game if the government of the day came calling with serious intent about what we actually thought and wanted. And if, in continuous dialogue with us, they then intelligently implemented measures that produced positive results many of us would simply conclude a mass of alien abductions had taken place and we'd been left with faux politicians. We'd also think it was one heck of a good trade.

Mr Blair added: "In this day and age if you've got the technology then it's vital to use that technology to track people down."

Uh huh. A case of "if you've got it just use it" kind of (not) thinking, huh? At least if you want to track people down. Hmmm, is he a geek? Does he ever think about the social ecosystem and the major consequences of what he's urging and the way he's urging it to go down? After his demo with Iraq, the NHS, and the progressive retraction of civil and human rights laws in the UK methiinks not.

Personally, I think he's a Ted Turner (of CNN fame) kinda guy: Ted Turner called his talent "news readers" because that's all the anchors are called on to do. Basic literacy and attractiveness are all that is required of TV reporters. A lot of them are out of their depth when they go off script and try to wing it.

Asked by Sky News whether there should be any restrictions on the number of people included in the database, Mr Blair - who has previously provided a sample of his own DNA voluntarily - said: "The number on the database should be the maximum number you can get."

I'm stumped, so Pop Quiz: Referring to the mystery of where such trivial thinking skills and the striking absence of practical common sense arises - Is it from a 'prestigous' (Fettes College, Oxford) education (was it all rah! rah! and beer! beer!??) that is (a) knowledge poor? (b) common sense leached? (c) wisdom absent? (d) content free? (e) all of the above? (f) or consciously intended?

The national DNA database has expanded by around a third to 3.6 million profiles since the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which allowed police to take and keep DNA samples from all people arrested for any imprisonable offence - regardless of whether they are eventually convicted.

Mr Blair said he did not believe there was "any problem" with members of the public providing samples, because if they had committed a serious criminal offence they "should be convicted".

Sigh. Which is bigger, his I.Q. or his shoe size (a UK size 10, US size 11 1/2, EU 45) - use whichever scale you prefer!?

He also stressed that the database sends a "strong signal" to the criminal community that they could be identified and caught from even the smallest trace at a crime scene.

Good point. But antagonistic and, ultimately, an ineffective approach and method for a free society, never mind a democratic one. Blunt-headed and unthought out as per the usual Blair schemes - the caveman's thumper updated with new materials and senses but not thinking.

The hit detective show series CSI: Miami (and now New York, et al) have excited viewers in the US and awakened them to the interesting intricacies of forensics, despite the shows technical hypes, exaggerations, and gaffes. As recently published (`Google "CSI effect" or see HERE for one example) they have had another interesting effect: criminals of all stripes have been learning, adapting, and improving their methods. It's an awareness and arms race that does not favour Blair's approach, and in its present form of implmentation in fact ultimately endangers us all and will compromise the police forces themselves.

Mr Blair and Home Office Minister Tony McNulty were touring the FSS laboratories to highlight its success in solving around 100 harrowing cases, including rapes and murders dating back as far as 20 years.

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There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it. Always. - Be the change you want to see in the world. - What's focused on expands, what's denied remains unhealed.

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