UK national ID database tested with FBI criminal data
Hand prints across the water
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.
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. µ
Comments
Shooorly...
Surely to properly test the system they are going to need lots of American crims walking about sticking their fingers and eyeballs onto scanners?!Otherwise all they'll be doing is checking their database can store lots of stuff (whoopy doo!).
Not Only Criminals
The IAFIS system contains all fingerprints collected by the FBI including everybody who has ever held a security clearance and presumably everyone who has been printed on entry to the US under recent unpatriotic policy changes.As a clearance holder - and an early engineer on the IAFIS program in the 90s - I am extremely concerned that this data-sharing has potentially violated the terms of the SF-86 form which contains a very comprehensive set of protections for any personal information disclosed as part of the investigative process.
Answering the wrong question
"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.They don't need to do this: the FBI can tell them the answer - they've been using this dataset of professionally-taken rolled prints for years. What the Hopeless Office needs to test is whether they can identify people based on prints taken by a poorly-trained travel agent slapping your hand on a scanner (which is how enrollment on the NIS is going to happen in a lot of cases).
Eye for eye, finger for finger
This is wonderful! When the US introduced fingerprinting for innocent foreigners who entered the US, nobody in the US complained. When the US pushed for more fingerprinting outside the US, like in the EU, nobody in the US complained. Now US citizens get the same treatment. I LOVE IT!And soon we will learn . .
that the biggest ever loss of personal ID data in one go has just happened : a laptop containing 55 million records of sensitive, personal data was somehow forgotten in an unmarked taxi.But nothing to worry about, the disk was password-protected at the BIOS level, right ?
Right.