Watching

I came across this in the March issue of Harper's Magazine, and I had to share it with you. It's like something from Monty Python, hilarious and yet with a troubling "Big Brother" aspect.

TROUBLE HELIX

From a list compiled in 2006 by British police chiefs of more than 5,000 offenses warranting that the DNA of an arrested suspect be retained for life in a national database.

- violating king's wife
- violating king's eldest daughter
- violating wife of king's eldest son and heir
- throwing offensive weapon or matter at sovereign with intent to harm
- levying war against the sovereign in his or her realm
- buggery
- buggery with woman
- buggery with animal
- buggery with man in private
- buggery with man other than in private
- procuring a woman who is defective
- procuring a woman by false pretences
- abducting unmarried girl under eighteen
- procuring poison to effect miscarriage
- supplying poison to procure miscarriage
- placing nonhuman embryo in a woman
- counseling females to be cirumcised
- riding horse furiously in street
- wantonly disturbing inhabitant by knocking on door or ringing doorbell
- keeping a disorderly house
- obstructing railways
- removing buoys
- rout
- affray
- voyeurism
- sacrilege
- theft of wild creatures
- theft of wild flowers
- using explosive to take fish
- discharging stone or missile to kill or take fish
- handling salmon in suspicious circumstances
- cruelty to badgers
- disturbing badger when it is occupying badger lair
- possessing or controlling dead badger
- offering prizes to forecast result of future events
- opening an incorrectly delivered postal packet
- fraudulently evading bingo duty
- falsely pretending to be a deserter
- abstracting electricity
- failure to remove disguise when required by constable
- wasting police time

(Photo: King Kong mural, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Feb. 2008)