MPs have needs too...

"Wacky" Jacqui Smith has submitted an expense form. That's not unusual. Perhaps frustrating for anyone who's ever tried to get legitimate expenses signed off, it's a bit much that hers contained the bill for her Virgin Media cable package. While we leave the tabloids to infer and sniggeringly imply what she may get up to in the privacy of her own home after it came to light that the bill included two porn films, let's examine her reaction to being caught putting a domestic expense through as a legitimate business one.

"I am sorry that in claiming for my internet connection, I mistakenly claimed for a television package alongside it. As soon as the matter was brought to my attention, I took immediate steps to contact the relevant parliamentary authorities and rectify the situation. All money claimed for the television package will be paid back in full," She said in a statement.

Fair enough, you may think, but if her husband (whom she's reportedly "furious" with) could order up pay-per-view skin flicks, it's not a simple broadband connection she's got - it's a full high-speed cable package. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you don't pay for the internet connection separately in a cable package. It's an all-in-one deal. If the charges for each part of the package were itemised, however, how did she mistake the high figure for the total package for one of the lower itemised charges? Did she even fill out her own expense claim?

There's a far more interesting aspect to this story, however. The natural conclusion many people will have jumped to after learning about Smith's porn bill was that she enjoys having, shall we say, a lovely relaxing time with a bit of porn. Go on, admit it - you did didn't you. However, the films were watched on 6st and 8th of April. Smith wasn't at home at the time. What a let down!

The interesting aspect is that the data collecting facilities Smith wants in place to collate details of our lives will ultimately be analysed by humans who are capable of making equally misguided inferences about us. If she doesn't learn that this can lead to some erroneous yet compelling conclusions that may ruin lives or worse, when the hell will she learn?

Surveiling the Innocent...

"Wacky" Jacqui Smith, the UK's Home Secretary, has written a letter to The Guardian defending our country's growing surveillance culture.

She says that CCTV has "helped to reclaim our town centres and public spaces for the law-abiding majority." In fact, with CCTV so ubiquitous, few consider it. Go to any town centre at closing time to see what stupid crimes are committed right in front of CCTV cameras. Indeed, some councils have started equipping them with loudspeakers to remind people they're being watched and that they face prosecution. So, what CCTV has actually done is made it easier to convict people after a crime has been committed.

Smith also defends the DNA database. "Each year," she writes, "literally hundreds of homicides and rapes are resolved with the use of DNA matches." Again, this detection is a marvel of modern technology, but it is always used after the fact. There are no statistics for crimes not committed because of CCTV or DNA matching, and so for the Home Secretary to imply that there's a quantifiable figure is, well, it's bogus.

In the same way that people don't think about CCTV, they don't think about the DNA they leave everywhere they go. After all, would there be any vicious rapes or murders of strangers if it were foremost in their minds? There's no doubt that DNA evidence and CCTV have caught thousands of dangerous criminals, but I don't understand why Smith can't understand that the opportunistic way genetic identities are also collected from the innocent who happen to come into contact with the police as part of their investigations is deeply odious to a society whose traditions include a strong sense of personal privacy.

CCTV and DNA databases are detection devices. Their ubiquity means that they're "invisible" and are therefore useless as crime prevention measures. Insisting to the contrary doesn't make it so. However, there's some good news. "In December I announced immediate steps to remove the DNA of children under 10 from the database, and set out the case for greater flexibility and fairness in the system," wrote Smith.

That's a good start, but if you've done nothing, why should the state keep tabs on your genetic identity "just in case"? To me, as a reasonable, law-abiding Englishman, and even though I'm not on this database, such arbitrary recording feels genuinely and deeply wrong. You should be free to go about your business without such a record. After all, the presumption of innocence has no statute of limitations, which is something that records in the DNA pertaining to the innocent must have in a decent, fair society.