Vital crime-busting kit – or insidious spread of the surveillance state…?

Published on Monday 27 October 2008 21:22

MOBILE fingerprint scanners capable of checking the identity of people on the street are set to become the latest crime-fighting weapon to be used by Scotland's police.

The technology has been piloted by roadside patrol units in England and Wales, where the results have been hailed as a "stunning success". Experts say the scanners speed up criminal investigations by slashing the amount of time officers have to spend verifying the identity of people stopped for questioning.

The hand-held machines have also proved useful in identifying bodies, and they may eventually be able to receive pictures of suspects.

However, civil liberties campaigners have voiced serious concerns.

The National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA), which has been developing the scanners, says they will be rolled out across the UK from 2010.

Officers say the scheme, called Project Midas (Mobile Identification At Scene), will transform the speed of criminal investigations. A similar, heavier machine has been tested during limited trials with motorway patrols.

An NPIA spokesman told The Scotsman: "We have been running trials in about 20 forces, and they've been a stunning success. They've speeded up the time it takes for police to identify people, preventing them from having to return to the station to get fingerprints taken.

"This means police officers are out in the community for longer."

He went on: "A national roll-out will begin in April 2010 and will include forces in Scotland. Forces will want this, as they've already been proved to save time for police. The only question is how many they will want."

Tens of thousands of sets – as compact as BlackBerry smartphones – are expected to be distributed.

They check prints against a national database, Ident1, which contains the records of 7.5 million people. The devices have already been used to make operational checks more than 30,000 times.

Some 97 per cent of the checks were completed within five minutes, with 87 per cent taking less than two minutes. At present, officers have to take suspects to custody suites if they need to check fingerprints – a procedure that takes an average of 67 minutes, the NPIA says.

The scanner proved its worth in one case, when officers in Avon and Somerset used one after stopping a vehicle for a roadside check. Personal details given by the driver proved to be false, and police discovered he was a disqualified driver wanted for a string of burglaries.

To allay concerns about mass surveillance and random identity checks, police insist fingerprints taken by the scanners will not be stored or added to databases.

Gareth Crossman, the policy director of Liberty, said: "Saving time with new technology could help police performance, but officers must make absolutely certain that they take fingerprints only when they suspect an individual of an offence and can't establish his identity."

A spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland said there were no "immediate" plans to introduce the devices in Scotland.

"Developments in England and Wales will be watched with interest and a decision taken on whether such devices should form part of the mobile data network which is currently being developed throughout Scotland," he said.