04/01/2008

News / UK national ID database tested with FBI criminal data

THE HOME OFFICE is testing its identity scheme database with criminal data supplied by the FBI, the INQUIRER has learned.

The Identity and Passport Service said in a written statement that the FBI had agreed supply data from the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), its biometric criminal database .

"IPS has a Memorandum of Cooperation with the FBI which enables the FBI to provide IPS anonymised fingerprint data for the purposes of testing our biometric systems," said the statement.

The IPS did not say how many records or precisely what fields of the FBI database would be used to test the ID system. But it did say that the test data would be "available in the millions", and that it would include 10-print fingerprint records.

"We need to ensure that all biometric systems used in the National Identity Scheme are fit for purpose," said the IPS.

"This requires us to ensure that any biometric system is tested thoroughly before, during and after deployment. One of the most important things to test is the ability to correctly identify fingerprints," it said.

"It requires a very large amount of biometric data to properly test a biometrics system intended for the National Identity Scheme (NIS), more than is available in the UK alone. For this reason we are using data from the FBI to produce a large test set," it said.

The FBI's IAFIS contains the fingerprints and criminal history of more than 55 milion people.

The FBI has been pressing other countries to make their biometric databases compatible with its own so that they can share data about criminals and suspected criminals. The Guardian revealed in January that Home Office officals were talking to the FBI about letting US officers get access to the Identity database.

The UK has always intended its Identity database to allow the police and intelligence services to track the movements of individuals. That data is to be fed into police and intelligence systems that analyse people's behaviour and identify people whose lifestyle patterns are thought to be suspicious.

Our friends at The Rogister unearthed a Cabinet Office document (pdf) today that described how the people tracking purpose preceded the government's public pronouncements of the need for an Identity database.

Published in June 2001, it said the "tracking database" was endowed with the following powers: "With progressive deployment of remote biometric verification terminals at tactical and strategic choke points, a comprehensive grid for internal movement control monitoring of individuals".

Duncan Hine, the IPS' director of integrity, said last July that he was pressing ahead with the ID Scheme's controversial data trail because it would be useful for police intelligence. The data trail is intended to record people's uses of their identity card.

Richard Thomas, the information commissioner, told the Home Affairs Committee in December that he was opposed to the data trail because it was dubious under data protection law.

"Data minimisation is a key principle associated with data protection and keeping this massive database with records of every time the card is swiped through a terminal would be distinctly unattractive and would, I think, increase the risks which might occur," he said.

The National Security Strategy, published a fortnight ago, echoed the EU's surveillance research strategy in stating that the old divisions between external (i.e. foreign) and internal (i.e. civil) threats. Thus the links between military and police, and foreign and civil areas of surveillance are removed.

The US Department of Homeland Security has staff seconded at the Home Office for the purpose of making their biometric border databases compatible. The DHS intends for western nations to share a joint immigration system. The EU is already building trans-national immigration and police databases.

The FBI has already run successful tests with the Department of Homeland Security for the real-time exchange of biometrically indexed records stored on criminal and border databases. The latest version of the IAFIS allows for facial recognition.

The Cabinet Office document described how law enforcers thought total surveillance, based on an identity scheme database, could bring about a Utopian end to crime.

The creation of a central biometric database for routine and remote authentication offers the possibility of...a near-perfect national archive of mass behaviour," it said.

"In the long term this "Domesday Log" will be of immense value...More immediately it offers an unprecedented possibility of tackling crime and disorder, because the strong likelihood exists that any perpetrator will be tied to the scene of any transgression by at least one biometrically-verified trail from interlocking surveillance systems with sufficient proximity to guarantee an automatic conviction with guilty plea."

"The deterrent effect is likely to largely eliminate the possibility of undetected impropriety at every level of society," it said.

By Mark Ballard

Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/01/id-database-tested-criminal

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