English Police Road-Test Hand-Held Fingerprint Scanner

CYBER WARS

The Police National Computer now holds extensive data on criminals, vehicles and property, accessible in seconds at more than 30,000 terminals.

by Staff Writers
London (AFP) Nov 22, 2006
Police in England and Wales began trialling hand-held electronic fingerprint readers on motorists Wednesday, the latest piece of new high-tech equipment being wielded in the fight against crime. Police say the device could save vast amounts of time and resources by identifying suspects on the spot rather than taking them to a police station -- should their prints be on the national database.

The scanner allows officers to search the 6.5 million fingerprints held on record and should produce a result within five minutes.

Estimates suggest it could save police more than 2.2 million pounds (4.2 million dollars, 3.3 million euros) per year.

The pilot scheme is being tested by traffic police in Luton, northwest of London, and is voluntary because under existing law, members of the public are not obliged to give their fingerprints at the roadside.

"This trial represents an important step forward in our commitment to ensuring we have an effective and efficient police service fully equipped for the challenges of modern policing," said police minister Tony McNulty.

"The new technology will speed up the time it takes for police to identify individuals at the roadside, enabling them to spend more time on the frontline and reducing any inconvenience for innocent members of the public."

Argentine policeman Juan Vucetich is credited with making the first positive criminal fingerprint identification in 1892.

The new device is the latest piece of sophisticated technology at the disposal of police officers.

The Home Office interior ministry says Britain leads the world in using DNA to identify criminals, with more than 3.4 million profiles on the national DNA database, representing 5.2 percent of the population.

The Police National Computer now holds extensive data on criminals, vehicles and property, accessible in seconds at more than 30,000 terminals.

And British police say they are world leaders in automatic number plate recognition, invented in Britain and used to track the movement of suspects and their vehicles.

But a report by the Surveillance Studies Network academic group published earlier this month warned that Britain was becoming a "surveillance society" where security cameras, credit card analysis and travel movements were used to track people's lives minute by minute.

There are up to 4.2 million closed-circuit television cameras -- about one for every 14 people or nearly 10 percent of those around the world.

Every person is caught on camera about 300 times each day.

Source: Agence France-Presse

CYBER WARS

Cyber Summit Begins At Pentagon November 16

Washington DC (AFNS) Nov 20, 2006
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