Databases, surveillance and crime control

Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Tuesday, 8th December 2009

The importance of databases in the prevention and detection of crime is now a routine part of contemporary discourses of crime control. This seminar critically examined the use of DNA, financial records and passenger information in the fight against crime and in the European war on terrorism, and provided an opportunity to reflect on how the use of these databases raises important legal and ethical questions about the surveillance of human populations as well as the social and political implications of increasing concerns about security.

Seminar Programme

DNA Databases



• Chair: Professor Jim Fraser (Associate Director, SIPR, University of Strathclyde) Setting the scene
  
  
• Andromachi Tseloni & Professor Ken Pease (Nottingham Trent University) DNA retention after arrest: balancing privacy and protection
  
  PowerPoint [658 Kb]
  
  
• Liz Heffernan (Trinity College Dublin) DNA and the ECHR: rights, rules and technicalities
  
  PowerPoint [1.19 Mb]
  
  
• Susan Ferguson (Head, Police Powers and Protection Unit, Scottish Government) DNA and fingerprint data: Developing law and policy
  
  PowerPoint [92 Kb]
  
  

  Datawars: the use of financial records and passenger information in the war on terror

  
  
  
• Chair: Professor Nicholas Fyfe (Director, SIPR)
  
  
• Marieke De Goede (University of Amsterdam) Datawars and the politics of preemptive policing
  
  
• Mara Wesseling (University of Amsterdam) A genealogy of the European fight against terrorism finance
  
  
• Alexandra Hall (University of Durham) & Jonathan Mendel (University of Dundee) Threatprints, threads and triggers
  
  

The Institute for Advanced Studies, 8th December 2009

(l to r) Fraser, Tseloni, Ferguson, Heffernan

(l to r) Wesseling, De Goede