Ben Needham - missing boy

lukesmom

Ben Needham has been missing from the Greek Island of Kos since 1991, he was 2 years old. His mother always believed he is still alive and with gypsies.
A man seen at mass in Greece with four Roma people had his photo and video taken by a member of the public and given to the police as he believed it could be Ben. Police are now searching for this man to do a DNA on him.

Bens mother Kerry has been shown the photo of the man and thinks he could very well be her son but doesn't what to get her hopes up as there have been hundreds of apparent sightings of him over the years that turned out to be false. Here's hoping it is in fact Ben. I've always had an interest in this case and felt so horrified that a little tot could just vanish into thin air. I'll try link the photos up in a minute

moxin

Here's a mad idea.

If everyone in the EU had their DNA stored on a big database and cross referenced to a missing child(assuming still living!), the chances of getting a match would be high with the baddies arrested and a family re-united. But hey we must not violate civil liberties :rolleyes:

Gee Bag

moxin wrote: »

Here's a mad idea.

If everyone in the EU had their DNA stored on a big database and cross referenced to a missing child(assuming still living!), the chances of getting a match would be high with the baddies arrested and a family re-united. But hey we must not violate civil liberties :rolleyes:

Here's an even madder idea,

Civil liberties took hundreds of years to attain and tens of millions of people died fighting for them, probably best not to just give them away.

dark crystal

I'd love to see a happy ending to this story. What hell that poor family must have been going through all these years; I can't imagine it.

moxin

Gee Bag wrote: »

Here's an even madder idea,

Civil liberties took hundreds of years to attain and tens of millions of people died fighting for them, probably best not to just give them away.

Since when is giving your DNA against your liberty? That's absurd unless you have something to hide.

Guess you're against passports as well :rolleyes:

General General

moxin wrote: »

Since when is giving your DNA against your liberty? That's absurd unless you have something to hide.

Guess you're against passports as well :rolleyes:

So, you would not be concerned about who would have access to that data & any implications for you down the line? Or can you not foresee any problems?

Eeden

moxin wrote: »

Since when is giving your DNA against your liberty? That's absurd unless you have something to hide.

Guess you're against passports as well :rolleyes:

We should probably just let them listen to our phone conversations and read our emails and text messages and all our post, because, hey, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear, right?

The only reason I have to value my personal right to privacy is because I have a deep, dark secret.

moxin

General General wrote: »

So, you would not be concerned about who would have access to that data & any implications for you down the line? Or can you not foresee any problems?

Who would concern me? What problems? The authorities would hold my DNA, nothing wrong with that.

In order to find murderers and rapists, the DNA have been taken from local men in a specific area and the culprits found. Thats a good thing.

Gee Bag

moxin wrote: »

Since when is giving your DNA against your liberty? That's absurd unless you have something to hide.

Guess you're against passports as well :rolleyes:

Oh, you know a few little things off the top of my head

• Being innocent til proven guilty
• My autonomy as an individual
• My distrust of the rapid growth of surveillance in society
• My constitutional right to bodily integrity
• Not wanting to give my utterly unique DNA profile to people I don't know and therefore can not trust

Perhaps you could explain why your so willing to give yours away?

P.S. I'm not against passports, but I am very much against people using stupid fvcking smilies

General General

moxin wrote: »

Who would concern me? What problems? The authorities would hold my DNA, nothing wrong with that.

Would you care if anyone other than the authorities would hold that information? or would you care if, say, a large corporation such as a Monsanto got that information?

moxin

General General wrote: »

Would you care if anyone other than the authorities would hold that information? or would you care if, say, a large corporation such as a Monsanto got that information?

Only the authorities of course. Think of along the lines of your passport as a form of ID with DNA added.

General General

moxin wrote: »

Only the authorities of course. Think of along the lines of your passport as a form of ID with DNA added.

How sure are you that that data would remain in the hands of authorities (or "authorities") & stay free from misuse/abuse? I wouldn't have a lot of faith that I could trust that data would not ever be accessed/searched/used for purposes that were profit motivated... would you?

I'm thinking along the lines of incidents such as shown here ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/7449927.stm )

moxin

General General wrote: »

How sure are you that that data would remain in the hands of authorities (or "authorities") & stay free from misuse/abuse? I wouldn't have a lot of faith that I could trust that data would not ever be accessed/searched/used for purposes that were profit motivated... would you?

I'm thinking along the lines of incidents such as shown here ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/7449927.stm )

Keep it out of private hands. If you're worried about 1 person leaving a laptop on a bus, we might as well get rid of everything with a database, passports, drivers licenses, PPS numbers, bank cards etc Your worries are an over the top reaction to an action which is rare.

General General

moxin wrote: »

Keep it out of private hands. If you're worried about 1 person leaving a laptop on a bus, we might as well get rid of everything with a database, passports, drivers licenses, PPS numbers, bank cards etc Your worries are an over the top reaction to an action which is rare.

So, you're willing to take that risk & are sure that it will stay out of private hands..? for example, you're sure that the government (the 'authorities') wouldn't outsource the handling of this data in some way/oversight in the future? & you're sure that any access, whether governmental or otherwise, wouldn't be enough to make available to the highest bidder thousands or millions of data entries?

& this isn't just social security numbers or even bank details, this is data that has much more value.. well, I'd imagine that you'll concede that point anyway.

Your apparent thought/belief that a single event, never mind some 'rare' events (12 in around 2 years, in the UK alone, in cases of 'lost' memory sticks or laptops...), would not effectively make some key DNA data on you available to whoever wanted it enough is somewhat surprising in the age of wikileaks & so on.

moxin

Keep it under tight government control(Irish not EU), no outsourcing allowed. Each country would hold their own populations DNA database and each country would conduct the search internally and return a result at EU level. The positives outweigh the negatives just like in the recent Roma children cases.

Just think of the possibility in this case that if every male at Bens present age had their DNA cross checked against the parents DNA, finding the missing person would be quite faster. Same for solving crimes as well!

Ten of Swords

moxin wrote: »

Keep it under tight government control

Sounds foolproof :rolleyes:

Does this Stasi-esque fantasy have an opt-out for anyone who does not want to participate in such a database, or would it be compulsory?

General General

moxin wrote: »

Keep it under tight government control(Irish not EU), no outsourcing allowed. Each country would hold their own populations DNA database and each country would conduct the search internally and return a result at EU level. The positives outweigh the negatives just like in the recent Roma children cases.

Just think of the possibility in this case that if every male at Bens present age had their DNA cross checked against the parents DNA, finding the missing person would be quite faster. Same for solving crimes as well!

I just don't think it's credible that you could expect 'tight government control' of this data (let alone Irish 'tight government control', Ireland would be frankly something quite backward in this, as there is no significant Defense department/spend). We've seen that governments of powerful nations (meaning here, large Defense 'spends') cannot keep hold of data that they consider deeply sensitive.

Perhaps, in some fantasy world, where no one was allowed to hack or leak data, where no one had any human failings that would lead them to compromise the database, maybe in such a fairy tale, you could trust that the data would be secure... but if the world was free of such human failings, then we wouldn't need the data as there'd be no crimes like that in the OP...

& given that it's quite obvious that people alone, being human, make such a database intrinsically 'insecure' (lacking any real/meaningful guarantee of security from being breached), all the creation of such a database would do would be to open up the possibility of a world of new crimes that could be more easily committed given the availability for abuse of this very data.

General General

Ten of Swords wrote: »

Sounds foolproof :rolleyes:

Does this Stasi-esque fantasy have an opt-out for anyone who does not want to participate in such a database, or would it be compulsory?

Oh, I'm imagining that it would be 'opt in' initially... then there would be some cases where it was noted in legal proceedings that some person had not 'opted in', with a consequent controversy... then an 'opt out' arrangement... & finally, an all inclusive system.

Of course, very early on, party membership would necessitate 'opt in'.

Gee Bag

Ten of Swords wrote: »

Sounds foolproof :rolleyes:

Does this Stasi-esque fantasy have an opt-out for anyone who does not want to participate in such a database, or would it be compulsory?

Its only compulsory for people with nothing to hide of course, if you question the brave new world for any reason your clearly a subversive criminal and deserve to be culled like a badger.

darkpagandeath

Sure what could happen to your DNA ... It will be secure don't worry ... I have never heard of any company bank government agency being hacked before have you ? I hear the CIA is so secure that it will never be hacked into ... I hear M16 laptops are secure you don't need to even worry about them being stolen

darkpagandeath

General General wrote: »

Oh, I'm imagining that it would be 'opt in' initially... then there would be some cases where it was noted in legal proceedings that some person had not 'opted in', with a consequent controversy... then an 'opt out' arrangement... & finally, an all inclusive system.

Of course, very early on, party membership would necessitate 'opt in'.

Like the people in prison ? And people that commit crime you know serious crime .. how long till oh you got a speeding ticket DNA please

General General

Gee Bag wrote: »

Its only compulsory for people with nothing to hide of course, if you question the brave new world for any reason your clearly a subversive criminal and deserve to be culled like a badger.

darkpagandeath wrote: »

Sure what could happen to your DNA ... It will be secure don't worry ... I have never heard of any company bank government agency being hacked before have you ? I hear the CIA is so secure that it will never be hacked into ... I hear M16 laptops are secure you don't need to even worry about them being stolen

Please note; a sound knowledge of C, Python or, I suppose, Java, Cblah or Cblahblah will probably result in enough earnings to buy that kidney/lung/heart on the black market in the future when it's needed, **because** of this very database's creation... a fresh one too. & not from someone your own age, a healthy teenager.

So, maybe, just maybe lay off attacking the idea.

General General

darkpagandeath wrote: »

Like the people in prison ? And people that commit crime you know serious crime .. how long till oh you got a speeding ticket DNA please

Speeding Ticket DNA, we have penciled in for 2018.

darkpagandeath

General General wrote: »

Please note; a sound knowledge of C, Python or, I suppose, Java, Cblah or Cblahblah will probably result in enough money to buy that kidney/lung/heart on the black market in the future when it's needed **because** of this database's creation... a fresh one too. & not from someone your own age, a healthy teenager.

So, maybe, just maybe lay off attacking the idea.

You do know banks get hacked constantly right ? They never report it they just take it as a hit of running business. They don't want to make people think its not secure and remove there funds.

Sigourney

moxin wrote: »

Since when is giving your DNA against your liberty? That's absurd unless you have something to hide.

Or you have a brain.

Femme_Fatale

moxin wrote: »

If everyone in the EU had their DNA stored on a big database and cross referenced to a missing child(assuming still living!), the chances of getting a match would be high with the baddies arrested and a family re-united. But hey we must not violate civil liberties :rolleyes:

Yeh, civil liberties - madness.

Why should everyone be punished for the actions of a tiny minority?

I see the auld "Why object if you have nothing to hide?" dregs were resorted to also. Terrible argument.

lukesmom

Update: the man in the photo has gone to the police and agreed to do a DNA test. He says he is Romanian and his girlfriend is Roma

lukesmom

There's a clearer shot of him here. I've put his photo alongside Kerry needhams photo and bens dad when he was younger.

lukesmom

UPDATE: institute of neurology and genetics check DNA in Ben Needham case. Results expected tomorrow 30th October.

Results back, negative. It's not Ben

dollyk

Looks like they are going back to dig 2 other sites now.

Spanish Eyes

The man with the digger is deceased now, so there is no libel for the dead.

Sorry, but it sounds to me like a communty closed ranks up to now.

I hope they find the child's remains.