DNA databases

A European court has reined in Britain's sweeping policy on collecting and holding on to DNA samples of criminal suspects.

Britain has allowed police to take DNA samples during a criminal investigation and retain them in a national database even when a suspect is not charged or is later acquitted of the charges.

The 17 judges on the European Court of Human Rights unanimously ruled that the "blanket and indiscriminate" use of DNA violated an individual's human right to privacy.

The ruling means that Britain will have to destroy DNA samples from more than 850,000 people in the database, including 40,000 children, who do not have a criminal record. England's database of 4.6 million samples is one of the largest in the world and even includes DNA of crime victims. Britain keeps the DNA samples until the person dies or reaches 100 years of age.

The ruling by the European Union's highest court came in an appeal from two men in unrelated cases after England refused to destroy their fingerprints and DNA samples taken during criminal cases. A harassment charge entered against one of them was dropped. The second man, who was 12 years old at the time of his arrest, was acquitted of armed robbery.

The court said that retaining the DNA was stigmatizing and humiliating. The European Court noted that people "were entitled to the presumption of innocence."

British authorities, disappointed in the ruling, defended their practice as a valuable crime-fighting tool that has linked DNA samples to thousands of crimes. The ruling cannot be appealed, but Britain has time to explain why some samples should be kept.

In the United States, DNA policies vary. Some states take samples just from convicted felons. Other states include anyone charged with a misdemeanor. The federal government this year will begin collecting samples from anyone arrested by a federal agency and from any foreigner detained by the government, whether or not they are charged with a crime.

Human rights advocates here and abroad contend that storing DNA of innocent people is an invasion of privacy and can lead to abuses. As the European Court has ruled, though, such practices have to protect the privacy of innocent people.