Fingerprinting

Sources:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/7430709.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/27/project-midas-fingerprint-scanner-liberty

Parents to be fingerprinted by nursery schools

A chain of nurseries is to require parents to use fingerprint scanners before collecting their children, it has been revealed.

Fifty nurseries run by kidsunlimited, a national group catering for children aged three months to five years, will introduce the technology over the next few months.

Six, including those in Cambridgeshire, Wilmslow in Cheshire and Notting Hill, West London, already operate the system. At least 100 other private or voluntary nurseries are already thought to be using scanners.

Critics have condemned the increase in surveillance society.

The Government has issued guidance telling head teachers they have the right to collect pupils' biometric data for 'security' reasons.

Parents, carers or guardians will be required to register a fingerprint in advance and then swipe a scanner on entering and leaving the nursery.

Quite how kidsunlimited intend to resolve the situation of a parent who refuses to participate is unclear.

Dan Norris, Labour MP for Wansdyke and a prominent child welfare campaigner, said: "My instinct is that is some what of an overreaction. It strikes me quite a strong reaction to a problem that could be managed in a less confrontational way. Fingerprinting is quite a big deal."

UK Police will fingerprint people in the street

UK Police are to be issued with hand-held fingerprint scanners, "so that they can check people's identities in the street".

There's no clear explanation offered of what value this is under the current law, where we are entitled to go about our lawful business without identifying ourselves to the police. The police just aren't entitled to "check your identity" – whatever that means.

Fingerprints taken using the device will be compared against the national police database, which holds information on a quite staggering 7.5 million individuals.

Large public occasions, sporting events, festivals and political conferences could be targeted by the schemes as well as the 2012 London Olympics.

NO2ID said there needs to be legal protections put in place. The group called for assurances that any failures in the technology would be reported to Parliament, and asked that it be made illegal for the fingerprints to be checked against any database other than the criminal databases. They said, for instance, that prints should not be checked against the proposed national identity database.

The group asked that it be made illegal for the fingerprints collected on the streets to be stored, and asked that police officers be banned from arresting those who refuse to give prints.

One thing is plain. History shows we cannot trust the government to constrain unlawful use of a new toy by overzealous forces. In 2000 the courts declared unlawful the standard police practice of hanging on, forever, to DNA records of unconvicted people. No illegal samples were destroyed as a result. Instead the present government changed the law retrospectively to make it all legal after all.
Fingerprinting then ID cards then microchips

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