UK changes tune on ID data test

THE UK HOME OFFICE has said it will not be using criminal data types to test the National Identity Register, a week after it said it would be using criminal data types to test the National Identity Register.

The Home Office has arranged to borrow millions of fingerprint records from the US Federal Bureau of Investigations - in both rolled (printed) and flat (electronic) formats - to test the UK's Identity Card Scheme. Last week, a spokeswoman for the Home Office said it would be using rolled FBI prints to test the National Identity Register, the heart of the UK's Identity Card Scheme.

This was odd. Criminal databases including the UK's own IDENT-1 store images of rolled prints because they need to be of a high quality to stand up in a court of law. But the NIR was going to use flat prints because it only needs quality enough to identify people, not convict them.

No2ID, a campaign group, had suggested that the Identity and Passport Service might test the NIR with rolled fingerprint data so that Identity Records can be matched against those stored in criminal databases. It would second the National Identity Register as a fish farm for criminal investigations, said No2ID.

This was so odd that the INQUIRER asked the Home Office to verify the matter. Could it be possible, we asked, that the IPS had acquired rolled fingerprints from the FBI to test its immigration database, the Immigration and Asylum Fingerprint System? Immigrants to the UK have had their rolled fingerprints added to the IAFS since 2001, the same way criminals fingerprints are stored.

The Home Office said no, it had acquired rolled fingerprint data from the FBI for no other purpose than to test the NIR. It refused to say why this was necessary when the NIR was going to use flats. Pressed further to explain why, the IPS said this week that the rolled data wasn't being used to test the NIR after all. It was going to be used to test the IAFS, in total contradiction to what it said last week.

"The existing immigration fingerprint database holds both rolled and flat fingerprints for immigration purposes and, as a result, it is necessary to have options in place that facilitate testing of both fingerprint recording methods as we introduce replacement systems," an IPS spokesman said in an email.

Perhaps the rolled prints are still required to test the NIR as well, asked the INQ? "No," said the IPS, "Rolled fingerprint images will not form part of any test relating to the National Identity Register".

What a merry runaround. Or as the poet Robert Frost said: "We dance around in a ring and suppose, But the secret sits in the middle and knows."

Not only has the Home Office been playing hide and seek with the basic facts over its NIR tests but, in respect perhaps of the government's declared principle of transparency, answered the INQ's Freedom of Information Request for a copy of its FBI data sharing agreement six months after it was made - some months later than it is legally required to do so - only to refuse it.

But criminal data tests or no, the NIR will be used to conduct criminal investigations. An IPS tech bigwig said last week that it was exploring the possibility of sharing the UK's national civilian identity database with foreign agencies. And the Identity Cards Act allows UK police to access the NIR. "Any infrastructure built to enable such search requests will be tested to ensure that it is fit for purpose, as will all components of the National Identity Scheme," said an IPS spokesman this week.

The question must be asked then, why the IPS isn't testing the NIR with rolled fingerprint data if it must ensure that its comparisons with criminal data are not erroneous. The fact is that the Home Office is keeping its options open: "The Memorandum of Understanding with the FBI is an enabling document, which would allow the UK Government to assemble a large set of fingerprint data should this be appropriate for testing the accuracy of a biometric system in the future,” it said. µ