Police officers will be able to take
fingerprints and carry out identity checks on people in the
street with new mobile devices.
The devices will be rolled out nationally after pilot projects
with 20 police forces generated "generally positive feedback", said
the
National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA).
The scheme allows officers to check someone's identity on the
spot. Officers, who must gain consent from the person they are
checking, can take the fingerprint using the device. It will be
sent back to a database, and a message will be sent back to the
officer within a few minutes saying whether the person is on it.
The fingerprint taken by the mobile device will not be stored, the
NPIA said.
The aim of the project is to save time for police officers, who
previously had to take members of the public back to a station to
check fingerprints.
The NPIA said the project "helps improve public safety by
establishing a person's identity and therefore preventing criminals
from slipping through the net".
But civil rights campaigners say members of the public may feel
under pressure to give fingerprints when it is not legally required
that they do so.
NO2ID, a campaign group against the
national identity scheme, 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.
The NPIA has put the contract for the national project out to
tender, and hopes to implement all devices by early 2010.