At Schneier on Security I see the British are at it again, this time with DNA-tracking of youngsters.

Our unproductive and sometimes deadly system of public and private teen boot camps were first a British idea, one that wasn't working there when they became all the conservative rage here, and still don't work.

Yet we've enshrined Boot Camps as if they were a benevolent industry.

Apparently much of British law enforcement is drooling for this latest self-destructive thought-crime innovation, and they have Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard on board as DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo).

Forces of British good sense are pushing back, as Roger Graef of The Guardian did in his blog The usual suspects: Listing at-risk children on the DNA database risks breeding anger, resentment and defiance.

Shami Chakrabarti director of the British civil rights group Liberty takes a somewhat harder swing that the proposal, saying:

Targeting innocent children to expand the DNA database is the Government playing the wolf in sheep's clothing.
Any child who is stopped by police, even if under 10, can have his DNA taken and retained for life without being charged or cautioned.
If the Government wants a National DNA Database, they should say so and hold a public debate, not pick on our kids who can't fight back.

Bear in the mind the historic arc of the teen boot camp debate, and you can see that this isn't merely a British debate. Schneier isn't just being proactive by pushing back here, now. It's time.