recovered. His fingerprints - which had been taken a year previously when he was accused of criminal damage but released without charge after the real culprit confessed - matched those on some of the letters. After his arrest it was discovered that the letters bearing his fingerprints were posted by him . He was released, and then had to campaign to have his DNA data removed from the National DNA Database. Time and again individuals have been fired from jobs, or failed to get jobs, because of errors in the Criminal Records Bureau database . They have been stigmatised as criminals, even to the extent of being falsely branded as sex offenders, because of database failings. This sort of mistake might seem rare, but it is going to become increasingly common. Police cars are being fitted with fingerprint scanners , and it seems to be only a matter of time before they can even check DNA on the spot . Systems will make mistakes, and procedures will go wrong. The victims of the benign database state are those who aren't treated in accordance with the intended rules, but are at the wrong end of breakdowns in data accuracy, procedural rules or system errors. Under a benign government, it's not the intended surveillance that makes victims of innocent people, but the errors. So why do I fear the idea of a database state, even when I have "nothing to hide"? Well, I do have things to hide. Everyone has things to