Steve Ranger of Silicon.com reports that the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office is spending 5 million pounds (about $8.7 million) to equip its embassies and consulates around the world with the technology to issue biometric passports. Technology company 3M will install new passport issuance systems that can identify biometric information at 104 embassies, consulates and high commissions.
Great, who needs ID cards, when you get your fingerprints in the passport.
A reader forwards the following information:
On October 25th, without any consultation, the Council of European Union introduced a change to this legislation, calling for the mandatory fingerprinting of all EU citizens, residents and visitors.
This, along with the passport could form the basis of an intrusive EU wide identity card, similar to that the current British government is proposing at national level, and certainly would enable EU-wide surveillance of everyone's movements.
The organisations Privacy International, Statewatch and European Digital Rights have written an open letter to MEPs. They are calling for endorsements of this letter, please email privacyint@privacy.org if you wish to do this. (The email address (terrrights@privacy.org) given on PI's web page for this purpose bounced.)
They are also calling for people to contact their MEPs over this by November 30th. You can find UK MEPs' emails here. For those EU residents not in the UK, these links should help.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has begun collecting digital fingerprints and pictures of visitors at three major U.S. land border crossings. Kimberly Weissman, spokeswoman for the DHS's US-VISIT Program said:
We are testing this at these three locations before we roll out the technology at the top-50 land border entry points.
As part of the pilot, fingerprint readers and digital cameras will be used on the southern U.S. border at Douglas, Ariz., and Laredo, Texas, and on the northern border at Port Huron, Mich. Less than 5 percent of the more than 100 million border crossings currently require that the visitors be documented, Weissman said. The other crossings are typically visitors with a Border Crossing Card, which allows people to travel within 25 miles of the border for a period of 30 days.
By the end of the year, the Department of Homeland Security plans to have digital cameras and fingerprint technology in use at the 50 busiest land crossings, which account for the vast majority of traffic across the U.S. border, Weissman said. There are 165 land-border crossings in total. When completed, the US-VISIT program will record the comings and goings of every foreign visitor and let U.S. homeland security officials know when people have overstayed their visas.
Privacy advocates are appalled by the ongoing plan to equip all U.S. passports with RFID chips that can be read surreptitiously from a distance Business Week reports. Computer security expert Bruce Schneier says:
We do need passports with more data. But they chose a chip that can be queried remotely and surreptitiously. I can't think of any reason why the government would do that, other than that they want surreptitious access. And if airport and border security guards can read everyone's passports on the sly, so could anyone with a radio-chip reader, from terrorists to identity thieves.
Washington Post reports that Rep. Jim Turner sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, who wrote that terrorists who alter their fingerprints have about an even chance of slipping past U.S. border watch-list checks because the government is using a two-fingerprint system instead of one that relies on all 10 prints. He mentioned a study by researchers at Stanford University who concluded the two-finger system is no more than 53 percent effective in matching fingerprints with poor image quality against the government's biometric terrorist watch-list. Turner said the system falls far short of keeping the country secure.
Turner accused homeland security officials of failing to be "more forthcoming" about the limitations of their approach.
I understand your desire to deploy biometric screening at our borders as quickly as possible. But more than three years after the 9/11 attacks, we have invested more than $700 million in an entry-exit system that cannot reliably do what the Department so often said it would: Use a biometric watch-list to keep known terrorists out of the country.
How about not using terrorists as an excuse for tagging the citizens?
Department of Defense (DoD) Biometrics announced that it has released a new Biometrics 101 Tutorial video and a publication entitled What DoD Thinks of Biometrics on its website. Both informational pieces - designed to contribute to the DoD community's understanding of biometrics - can be accessed here.
The Biometrics 101 Tutorial video is a collaborative effort between the National Defense University at Fort McNair, Washington D.C. and DoD Biometrics. Presented by Lieutenant Colonel Craig Kaucher (U.S. Army Ret.), the video provides an introduction to biometric technologies, basic concepts, and societal issues associated with biometrics.
Biometric testing of face, eye and fingerprints could soon be used on every resident of the UK to create compulsory identity cards. BBC News Online's Tom Geoghegan volunteered for a pilot scheme and looked, unblinking, into the future.
What was interesting about article that it is obvious that Home Office is trying to make the process as 'palatable' to people, so it is not too Big Brotherish...
This isn't a test of the technology - that's likely to change in the future as things move on - it's the process. We're looking for customer reactions and perceptions, and any particular difficulties.
Just don't make it feel like Big Brother although that's what you'll be getting.
Internetnews.com reports that the U.S. Senate voted to delay by one year the looming Oct. 26 deadline for Visa Waiver Program (VWP) countries to begin issuing machine-readable passports. The House of Representatives has already approved a one-year extension.
The VWP allows visitors from Europe, Japan, Australia and 22 other countries to visit the United States without having to obtain a visa. In 2002, Congress approved the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act, which required those countries to issue tamper-resistant passports that incorporate biometric identifiers.
According to the U.S. Department of State, neither the United States nor any of the larger VWP countries, including England, France, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Spain or Japan, are in a position to meet the Oct. 26 deadline.
The legislation now goes to the White House, and, although President Bush sought a two-year delay, he is expected to sign the bill.
Maura Harty, assistant secretary of the Bureau of Consular Affairs, told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that a delay in the program implementation is necessary because of technological challenges encountered by the United States and the visa waiver countries. She cited issues, such as chip availability, the security of the data on the embedded chips and the international interoperability of readers.
Harty said the United States does not expect delivery of the 64 kilobyte "contactless" chips needed for the passports until next year, and the State Department does not anticipate completing the transition to biometric passports until the end of 2005.
FCW.com reports that the long-awaited 9/11 Commission report from the bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks calls for better information sharing among government agencies, adoption of biometric technologies and the completion of a visitor tracking system as soon as possible.
The report called for better technology and training to detect terrorist travel documents and the use of biometric identifiers, or unique physical characteristics, to authenticate such documents. United States officials are taking steps already, such as requiring foreign visitors to have machine-readable, tamper-resistant passports with embedded biometric identifiers. However, commission officials said Americans should not be exempt from carrying biometric passports as well.
The Homeland Security Department should complete a biometric entry/exit screening system, called the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) program as soon as possible, according to the report. There should be improved use of no-fly lists to screen airline passengers as discussions for revamping the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS) II continue.
I so look forward to travelling to the US...
Security software company Saflink said today that it would work with Microsoft to develop software for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, sending its shares to its highest level in a month. Mark Belk, Microsoft's chief architect for homeland security software said:
Together, we provide a compelling solution for Homeland Security programs involving biometrics, smart cards, tamper-proof identities and physical security controls.
Compelling for whom...
The Guardian reports that a number of VIP clubbers at a Barcelona nightclub have been implanted with a chip in their upper arm. Steve van Soest, spokesman for the club explains:
One of our owners wanted to do something special for our new VIP section. He'd read about the chip in newspapers, so we started to see if it was possible and legal here in Spain. It was.
Since its launch, 25 people have had the chip injected into their upper arm by a registered doctor at the club, which also plans to use the technology in its sister club in Rotterdam.
Now, however despicable and unacceptable I find compulsory tagging and identification, this is voluntary. These people have chosen to have the chip injected and I see no reason to get excited about that. I will, however, object to the state or other institutions forcing me to do it either by straightforward coercion backed by law or by not giving me a choice.
Jay Cline writes for ComputerWorld:
Governments and corporations increasingly see biometrics as the primary way they'll identify people in the future. In an age of terrorism and fraud, they hope fingerprint and eye scanning will become the cheapest and most reliable means of verifying that people are who they say they are. But are we ready for this convergence of computers with our flesh and bones? I don't think so. This significant intrusion into our personal space needs a heightened level of privacy protection that most organizations have only just started to envision.I have a deeper misgiving about biometrics. Because they promise to be much more cost-effective and reliable than traditional authentication methods, I expect businesses will want to adopt biometrics-only authentication, discarding expensive traditional methods.
Three types of system failures could make your life miserable: a failed match, a mistaken match and stolen biometrics... Biometric ID theft victims may never fully clear their names.
Cline goes on to give a checklist of the top controls customers and citizens should demand before cooperating with biometric systems. Since I think that should be never, if you want to know, you'll have to go and read it yourself...
Belgium is to begin issuing biometric passports before the end of the year, while in the US (which could be said to have started all this), the State Department is to begin a trial run this autumn, with full production hoped for next year. Register speculates:
The apparent ease with which these countries appear to be switching passport standards does raise just the odd question about the UK's very own ID card scheme, which proposes to ship its first biometric passports not soon, but in three years. Regular readers will recall that Home Secretary David Blunkett justifies the ID card scheme on the basis that most of the cost is money we'd have to spend anyway, because we need to upgrade our passports to meet US and ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organisation) standards, and that by making this investment the UK will be putting itself ahead of the game, technology-wise, and that we shall all therefore be technology leaders and rich.The biometric passport system the US intends to use simply seems to be an addition of the necessary machine readable capabilities to the existing system. Passport applications, including photograph, will still be accepted via mail, and the picture will then be encoded, added to the database and put onto the chip that goes in the passport. As you may note, a picture is in these terms a biometric, while a camera is a biometric reader, which they are. But don't noise it around, or you'll screw the revenues of an awful lot of snake-oil salesmen.
Back in the UK, we are of course rather more rigorous in our interpretation of the matter, and the system and its schedule will be priced accordingly. But should we worry about losing our lead? No, not exactly. We should worry about spending a great deal of money on a system which will largely police ourselves, and which - in the event of it actually working - will probably turn out to be a huge white elephant.
Long eyelashes and watery eyes could thwart iris scanning technology used for the government's ID card trial. An MP who volunteered to take part in the trial at the UK Passport Service headquarters in London complained the scanning was uncomfortable.
Home Affairs Select Committee member Bob Russell, who suffers from an eye complaint, said his eyes watered and staff were unable to scan his iris. Project director Roland Sables told MPs:
The pundits tell us that we should expect 7% across the board to fail with iris recognition, mainly due to positioning in front of the camera. Others are due to eye malformations, watery eyes and long eyelashes in a small percentage.
Hard contact lenses could also prove problematic. Mr Russell expressed concern about the scanning after his experience.
I think this is going to cause serious problems for people who suffer with bright lights and people with epilepsy. I think it will be necessary at every machine to have at least one member of staff who is a qualified first aider to a high level. I can see people keeling over with epileptic fits.
People with faint fingerprints would also be unable to register on the system, as would manual labourers, particularly those who work with cement or shuffle paper regularly, Mr Sables told the MPs.
The Plan is that by 2013, 80% of the population are expected to have a biometric passport or driving licence, at which point the government will decide whether to make the ID cards compulsory. The remaining 20% are presumably construction workers with long eyelashes, wearing hard contact lenses and suffering from epileptic fits...
David Blunkett said (on April 7) that he was pushing on with plan for an ID card, with a draft bill to hit Parliament within months. The ID cards will contain biometrics and may be in the wallets of UK citizens by 2007 at the earliest. Blunkett told Radio Five Live that the introduction is necessary to give the government better control over immigration and prevent terrorists using multiple identities.
Blunkett, however, acknowledged that getting compulsory ID cards into law wouldn't be an easy process. "It would be very surprising if there were not misgivings," he said. A number of high-profile Cabinet colleagues have expressed objections to the scheme, including Home Secretary Jack Straw and Trade and Industry Minister Patricia Hewitt.
He also admitted there were practical issues to be overcome before the cards were made compulsory. Among them, that Parliament could only vote on the issue of making the cards compulsory when 80 per cent of UK citizens carried them anyway and that estimates of how much the introduction would cost the taxpayer differ wildly – from around £1bn to around £3bn.
While biometrics are high on the UK government's love list, the rest of the Europe is taking a step back from the idea.
The civil liberties wing of the European Parliament has delayed proposals for biometric passports until the tail end of this year, after elections to the parliament have taken place. MEP Ole Sørensen said
The European Parliament is [currently] not in a position to endorse the proposals… We need proper democratic scrutiny of this far-reaching legislation, which in the worst case scenario could represent a step towards systematic registration of EU citizens' personal data.
Unpersons alerted us to the news that from today British police may legally and against the will of any law-abiding subject, take DNA samples and fingerprints from any arrested person without that person having even been charged with committing a criminal act.
We can but echo the good Unpersons concerns:
The law now leaves British police officers free to help Blunkett establish one of the most ambitious and truly disturbing elements of the British police state that he has slowly but surely been working to create over the last few years. In a country where the state can take over half of your income, charge you expenses when it wrongly imprisons you - yet fail to defend you after it has crushed the right to self-defence, send parents to jail for not sending their children to state day-care centres schools, steal your property because 'you couldn't possibly have earned that much money without selling illegal drugs' whilst slowly handing over control to a foreign power, attempt to dictate what you eat 'for your own good' and generally treat its citizens as its troublesome children one has to wonder to what extent we already live in a police state.
This has not been a good week.
John Lettice writes for The Register on the difficulties associated with relying on biometrics.
It will all be very costly, he says, and the pseudo-certainty that it supplies may actually cause mistakes to be made, when the ID checks out but the surrounding facts look dodgy.
If you do not check for duplicates, for example, then the system is not going to tell you that Fred Bloggs of Sollihul is in fact Osama bin Laden. A silly example? Yes and no – obviously, it is not very likely that our current entry systems are going to let someone called Fred Bloggs walk through when they look strangely like Osama bin Laden. However, if he checks out as Fred Bloggs, UK citizen, with no record under our future automated systems, then general appearance is rather less likely to be challenged, or even noticed. So the assumed reliability of the systems could actually increase the security of fugitives in the event of their having successfully obtained clean, genuine ID.
There is much more.
More on the ICAO story first noted by Trevor. An international aviation group is completing new passport standards this week, setting the groundwork for all passports issued worldwide to include digitized photographs that a computer can read remotely and compare to the face of the traveler or to a database of mug shots.
Supporters hope the system will banish fake passports and help fight terrorism. But critics say the standards will enable a global infrastructure for surveillance and lead to a host of national biometric databases, including ones run by countries with troubling human rights records.
The ICAO has already settled on facial recognition as the standard biometric identifier, though countries may add fingerprints or iris scans if they wish. The standards body will vote on Friday whether to adopt radio-frequency ID chips, such as those used in Fast Pass toll systems, as the standard method of storing and transmitting the digitized information.
Simon Davies, director of human rights group Privacy International, said the ICAO hasn't consulted with human rights groups and shouldn't be involved at all.
The most troubling aspect of international standard setting is that it often occurs without any national dialogue through the diplomatic process. Governments merely use the standards bodies as a convenient means of implementing controversial policy.
Privacy International suggested that the ICAO should have adopted a standard that would allow computers at a border to match the traveler to the digital photo on a passport, but that did not permit any government to keep a central database of photos.
The group argued that facial recognition is not the most accurate identification benchmark, and that matching a person to an old photograph is problematic.
Mentioned en passant in another alarming article in which David Blunkett threatens yet further abridgements of civil liberties under the guise of 'fighting terrorism', it is noted he and the European Commission advocated the idea of...
Joining forces with the Commission, Mr Blunkett backed proposals for a fingerprint data base of all EU citizens and tougher measures to tackle terrorist funding.
Oh wonderful.
Information Week reports that the State Department plans to begin issuing passports with chips containing biographic information later in the year. Maura Harty, testified at a Congressional hearing Thursday that the United States needs to take the lead in issuing the new passports to encourage other nations to do likewise. Doing so, she says, will help secure our borders against terrorists and other potential troublemakers. Harty told member of the House Government Reform Committee's hearings on the government's US-Visit program, which requires many foreigners entering and leaving the United States to have their fingerprints and face electronically scanned.
We recognize that convincing other nations to improve their passport requires U.S. leadership both at the International Civil Aviation Organization and by taking such steps with the U.S. passport. Embedding biometrics into U.S. passports to establish a clear link between the person issued the passport and the user is an important step forward in the international effort to strengthen border security.
Of course, biometrics is foolproof and fingerprinting your citizens is going to improve border security how exactly?! Another example of a fallacy typical of the statists that if only we had total surveillance, then no crime, threat or terrorism would be possible. Balls, balls, balls.
Sorry for the outburst, it is just one stupid statement by a state official too many... Sadly, I am sure there are many more to come.
A three-dimensional mug shot may soon be the only ID you'll ever need Wired reports.
DuPont Authentication Systems and A4Vision, a company that sells facial-imaging products, have developed a biometric security device that generates in-depth, three-dimensional facial portraits similar to holograms and secure enough to be embedded in documents.
Using A4Vision's Enrollment Station, people can have their 3-D facial image embedded in a film called Izon and registered as digital data in a database in less than 10 seconds. The device outputs both a 3-D biometric template and a standard color image of the person.
The image in the biometric template carries enough detail to view a subject's head from ear to ear. The template can be affixed to cards or passports; once the image is embedded, users need only be scanned to see whether their facial characteristics match. The biometric data obtained is more comprehensive than 2-D imagery since it contains information along three axes instead of two. Donald P. D'Amato, a biometrics expert at Mitretek Systems, a nonprofit research organization says:
I believe that the matching of 3-D images can probably be made more accurate than that of conventional face recognition using 2-D imagery. However, the set of 3-D and 2-D features that are chosen will be crucial to the level of accuracy achieved.
Right now the device is said to be accurate enough to distinguish between identical twins. Working with SRI International's twin registry, the company has tested the device with 36 twin sets, and it was able to distinguish one twin from the other.
Accuracy is a big concern. Identity theft appears to be the fastest-growing crime in America, with identity-related crimes projected to rob the global economy of $24 billion this year. If not well-protected, biometrics may cause even more spectacular cases of ID theft, such as the gummy bear fiasco. Evans says 3-D facial identification is secure, however, because the facial image is only stored with the holder of the biometrics data.
It takes the card or 3-D facial image, the holder and the database to match before security can be breached. So just swiping a card won't allow me to use someone's credit card anymore, for example. Or just breaking into a database will not supply me with sufficient data to construct a 3-D facial image.The issue here is: Can someone not be recognized? Yes ... but can someone fool the system into thinking it is someone else? No.
Telegraph reports that America began a strict new regime of border controls yesterday, scanning fingerprints and taking photographs of arriving foreigners to track down potential terrorists.
The only exceptions will be visitors from 28 countries, mostly European states, including Britain, whose citizens can visit America for 90 days without a visa.
The tough measure was ordered by Congress after it emerged that two September 11 hijackers had violated the terms of their visas. Tom Ridge, the homeland security secretary, defended the scheme at its launch at the international airport in Atlanta, saying it would make borders "open to travellers but closed to terrorists".
Yeah, right.
USA Today reports that face-scanning technology designed to recognize registered sex offenders and missing children has been installed in a Phoenix school in a pilot project that some law enforcement and education officials hope to expand.
Two cameras, which are expected to be operational next week, will scan faces of people who enter the office at Royal Palm Middle School. They are linked to state and national databases of sex offenders, missing children and alleged abductors.
Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a tough-talking sheriff who has previously gained notoriety for his chain gangs and prison-issued pink underwear said:
If it works one time, locates one missing child or saves a child from a sexual attack, I feel it's worth it.
Civil libertarians have raised red flags about the idea, pointing to potential privacy violations, and biometrics experts say facial recognition programs are not foolproof.
The following editorial was published in the latest Economist:
The ability to recognise people automatically by analysing bodily characteristics such as fingerprints, faces and eyeballs – collectively known as biometrics - has long been a goal of technologists and governments alike.Plans for large-scale projects to incorporate biometric scans into passports, ID cards and visas are now under way in several countries. From January 5th, America will begin scanning foreigners from particular countries as they arrive at its airports. Both America and Europe plan to start issuing biometric passports as soon as next year. Biometric ID cards are being adopted in Hong Kong and Oman, and Britain plans to follow suit. Politicians seem to be transfixed by the technology.
Typical was the recent declaration by David Blunkett, Britain's home secretary, that biometrics "will make identity theft and multiple identity impossible – not nearly impossible, impossible". This claim is absurd. Current biometric technology is not the answer to the world's security fears.
ComputerWorld reports on the U.K. government set to consider legislation next year for the establishment of compulsory biometric identity cards and a central database of all U.K. subjects.
The information that the government is considering for inclusion on the card includes personal details such as a person's home address and telephone number, his National Insurance number (the equivalent of the U.S. Social Security number), medical information and criminal convictions, as well as the biometric information, most likely in the form of an iris, fingerprint or palm print scan.
The ID cards would be rolled out in two stages, beginning with the biometric identifiers being included on renewed and newly issued passports and driver's licenses. Also as part of the first phase, once the national database was available, the government would issue identity cards to European Union and foreign nationals seeking to remain in the U.K., and would also offer an optional card for those who do not have a passport or driver's license. As part of the second phase of the program, to be implemented five years after its launch, the national ID card would become compulsory.
The government estimates that residents will be charged about $41 for the card and that setting up the basic system will cost taxpayers $215 million, and up to $3.59 billion to fully implement.
In a speech to the House of Commons on Nov. 11, Blunkett asserted that the development of technology that recognizes specific personal identifiers, or biometrics, "would mean that identity could not be forged or duplicated." But the government's own feasibility study on the use of biometrics issued in February said such methods "do not offer 100% certainty of authentication of individuals" and went on to warn that the "practicalities of deploying either iris or fingerprint recognition in such a scheme are far from straightforward."
Bart Vansevenant, director of security strategy at Ubizen NV, said his company sees no real value for adding biometrics to ID cards, especially since it wouldn't stop terrorism or fraud. Ubizen has been working on Belgium's electronic ID card scheme, the first in Europe to move beyond the pilot stage, according to Vansevenant. The Belgian ID cards, which should be fully rolled out in three to four years, use digital certificate technology, which is cheaper and more reliable than biometrics, Vansevenant said.
There is no reason that is good enough to explain the use of biometrics. It is still a very immature technology, plus you have the additional costs of equipment, support and administration problems... Vansevenant also expressed serious doubts about the security of a national database. It is a pretty bad idea, especially the database, which would be an ideal target for hackers and terrorists.Perhaps the U.K. and the U.S. [which is proposing the use of biometric data on U.S. passports] are using biometrics and related databases from a marketing point of view and trying to position it as the big solution to the problem of terrorism. But even then, it's still a bad idea.
Quite.
New Scientist has learned that the proposed system to introduce identity cards in the UK will do nothing to prevent fraudsters acquiring multiple identity cards.
Unveiling the proposals last week, the home secretary, David Blunkett, said they are necessary to prevent identity fraud. Every resident would have to carry an ID card containing biometric information, such as an iris scan. Cards could then be checked against a central database to confirm the holder's identity.
But Simon Davies, an expert in information systems at the London School of Economics and director of Privacy International, says the system would not stop people getting extra cards under different names. If he is correct, it could have far-reaching implications.
The problem, says Davies, is the limited accuracy of biometric systems combined with the sheer number of people to be identified. The most optimistic claims for iris recognition systems are around 99 per cent accuracy - so for every 100 scans, there will be at least one false match.
Bill Perry, of the UK's Association for Biometrics, agrees that there is an upper limit to the reliability of iris scans.
It's not an exact science. People look at biometrics as being a total solution to all their problems, but it's only part of the solution.
He added that using more than one biometric identifier - for example, iris scans and fingerprints together will also be considered. This would solve the accuracy problem, but vastly increase the cost.
Oh, jolly good. So scanned and finger-printed is the way to go...
Thanks to Groc's Bloggette for the link.
Statewatch reports that the European Commission has produced two draft Regulations (25.9.03) to introduce two sets of biometric data (fingerprints and facial image) on visas and resident permits for third country nationals by 2005. The biometric data and personal details on visas will be stored on national and EU-wide databases and be accessible through the Visa Information System (VIS) held on the Schengen Information System (SIS II).
Another proposal for the inclusion of biometrics and personal data: "in relation to documents of EU citizens, will follow later this year".
Statewatch summarises the proposals:
Tony Bunyan, Statewatch editor, comments:
These proposals are yet another result of the "war on terrorism" which show that the EU is just as keen as the USA to introduce systems of mass surveillance which have much more to do with political and social control than fighting terrorism.
What do you call a country which is run by the police for the benefit of the police? Is that a 'police state'? Yes, I think that qualifies. Surely it does?
SENIOR police officers will call this week for the DNA of everyone in Britain to be put on a national database from the moment they are born.They believe that this would be a vital weapon in the drive to curb crime and help to solve hundreds of murders.
[From the UK Times]
Some nerve those plods have got! Assuming that nothing has been lost in the media translation, I detect not even a hint of humility. After all, they are supposed to be public servants. And what next, I wonder? 'Police demand increase in income tax to help fight crime'? 'Police demand greater integration with the European Union to help fight crime? 'Police demand greater regulation of world trade in order to fight crime'?
What disturbs me here is not so much the idea of a national DNA database. Okay, that does disturb me but HMG hasn't got the money to fund such a grand scheme so it isn't going to happen (yet). No, the ugliness is more immediate than that; it lies in the casual assumption by police chiefs that they can simply demand such a thing and expect their will to be done without even paying lip service to the principle of democracy that most people in this country set great store by. Who died and left them boss?
The crime-solving canard has worn so thin that it is almost beyond mockery. Solving crimes is something that the UK police are not much interested in doing anymore. Population control is now their job ('Social Management' in NuSpeak). And as they now regard themselves to be a uniformed wing of the ruling elite, I suppose we're going to get much more of this kind of thing from them in future.
So now we are the servants and they are the masters. How did that happen?
Cross-posted from Samizdata.net
Maybe White Rose should have an additional category entitled "Better Late Than Never". I've certainly done several such WR postings.
Here's another, from the Independent on August 25th:
The case of Stephen Kelly, who was found guilty in February 2001 of culpable and reckless behaviour, exemplifies the way the police and courts can access medical details collected as part of a research project.
That establishes that we're dealing with a different Kelly. The guts of the story is that supposedly anonymous research data ended up being used to prosecute somebody, which is just the kind of thing we are constantly promised isn't going to happen, can't happen, must never happen, etc.
During the investigation of Kelly, police obtained the anonymised codes from patient medical records and used them to seize the scientific evidence that established the genetic similarity between the Aids viruses Kelly and his girlfriend had.
So much for "anonymised".
Professor Leigh Brown was angry at the information being used. "These databases will have an important role to play in developing our understanding of genetic variation and disease, but what will protect them from seizure by legal authorities?"
Indeed.
I always feel that whenever someone says that there is "no question" of something happening, it means there is and someone's just asked it, and I now realise that I further suspect that when someone important enough to be quoted about it says that something is "essential", without actually saying that it is going to happen, the game is up there too. If that's right, then this is bad news:
The scientist in charge of setting up Britain's DNA databank, which will collect information on the lifestyle, health and genes of 500,000 people, said he will oppose any attempt by police or the courts to gain access to the data.In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Dr John Newton said strict confidentiality is essential if the UK Biobank project is to enjoy the public confidence it needs to succeed. Three years ago, police forced medical scientists in Edinburgh to hand over the confidential data of another research project to prosecute a volunteer in the study.
Critics of the UK Biobank, which aims to compare the influence of genes and lifestyle on the health of half a million volunteers, says there is nothing to stop this information also being used by the police, employers or insurance companies.
This paragraph sounds better:
But Dr Newton said there were no plans for a national biobank covering the entire population. He also questioned whether the information held on UK Biobank would be of any interest to the police. "People fear police will take a DNA sample from the scene of a crime, do a DNA test on it, then go to Biobank and run that DNA against our 500,000 and say, 'OK, it was you', and fish them out. As far as I understand it, they won't be able to do that. We will not have done the entire DNA sequence of every participant, so we will simply not have the information on the same genetic variables that the police use [for DNA fingerprinting]. It is very difficult to say 'never', but I can't see how Biobank will help police."
But I suppose the danger here is not that this is already checkmate for genetic confidentiality, but that things are advancing (i.e. perhaps getting worse) one little step at a time.
First things first. First establish the principle that it's okay to have a national DNA database. Then beef up what's in it, to the point where the police could do what Dr Newton says they now couldn't. Then allow the police to do just that. Then other government agencies get in on it …
FT.com reports that the UK government's proposal to genetically screen all newborn babies and store the information in a database is likely to be rejected by the Human Genetics Commission, the watchdog set up by Labour in 1999 to monitor advances in biotechnology, on the grounds of being unworkable, expensive and potentially threatening to civil liberties.
Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, the head of the HGC, said the medical benefits of the Human Genome had been over-hyped, leading to unrealistic expectations and the threat of discrimination against people who carried certain genes.
It is one of those things that initially has great attraction: The idea that you might be able, at the begining of your life, to know so much about yourself that you can pretty much chart your life appropriately, make sure that you have twice the normal helping of spinach and therefore throw off the chance of getting a disease. But it does not take account of where a child might be living, what it might be susceptible to because of its environment, and all the other factors that interact with your genes and change the prognosis.
The proposal to test all babies was announced in a White Paper published in June. It promised £50m ($80.4m) to expand the ability of the National Health Service to cope with the rapid advance in genetic testing.
The Guardian reports that the government wants biometric iris-recognition machines installed in ten UK airports within a year.
The scanners will probably be welcomed by regular travellers for "speeding them past immigration queues". Simply look the machine in the eye and say goodbye.
How many will consider the privacy ramifications of saving a few minutes at the airport? Are we to believe that once a big enough database is established these machines will not spread?
How long before we are scanned every time we enter a public place and that information recorded centrally? All to protect society, of course.
It seems Big Blunkett is determined to get us all on file by any means necessary.
This is one of those stories that Richard Littlejohn would classify under "You Couldn't Make It Up". I'm sure White Rose will have more to say about it than this one posting. For now I hardly have time to do more than flag it up before going to bed.
The national DNA database containing more than two million samples could end up in the private sector under Government plans to sell off the Home Office Forensic Science Service (FSS).
This is toxic. You gather information about people without any consent (because being arrested isn't that kind of deal) and then you turn the management of the resulting database into a business. Objections? Where do you start? How long do we have?
Call this whatever other names you want, but don't you dare call it "pure" capitalism, or the "extreme" free market.
Last night, the proposed sale threatened to become the most controversial since the privatisation of the air traffic control system.
I'll say.
News yesterday of the steady expansion of Britain's national DNA database. From the Guardian:
Civil liberties campaigners last night claimed the government was intent on building a national DNA database "by stealth" as police prepared to enter the two-millionth genetic profile on to the system later today.The police minister, Hazel Blears, who will load the sample on to the system, claimed last night that since 1995 the national DNA database has transformed the fight against crime, helping to catch not only serious criminals but also more minor offenders such as burglars and car thieves.
The British DNA database was the first and is the biggest in the world with currently more than 1.8 million criminal profiles and around 200,000 DNA samples from unsolved crimes, including blood and semen stains.
. . .
The Liberal Democrat Simon Hughes said this meant those who were never charged or who were subsequently found innocent would be unable to remove their details.
"Now that one in every 30 people features on the police DNA database, the government must come clean on its intentions," he said. "If ministers want a database of every citizen's DNA, let them say so instead of trying to create one by deception."
The civil rights organisation Liberty claimed the government was hell-bent on creating a national DNA database by stealth, and that academics had warned it was not foolproof.
Several test cases are in progress in the US over how unique a DNA match actually is. Even the British founder of DNA fingerprinting, Professor Sir Alec Jeffreys, has warned that samples involving only a small number of cells could prove misleading, as we are all potentially covered in bits of other people.
But Ms Blears last night defended the growing use of the DNA database. "DNA profiles... play a vital role in the search for truth, establishing innocence as well as proving guilt. Law abiding citizens have nothing to fear and today I will have a sample of my own DNA taken and loaded on to the database."
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