Cops on the spot fingerprinting
 

Drivers pulled over by police are to have their fingerprints scanned by the side of the road. A pilot scheme for a new hand-held electronic fingerprint reader is to be launched in Luton, Bedfordshire, by officers targeting motoring offences. Police hope the Lantern device will save time and money by allowing them to identify suspects on the roadside without having to take them to the station.
It lets officers search a national database of 6.5m fingerprints and get a result within five minutes.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/22112006/14...gerprints.html

Ok so Big brother syndrome is stepping up, a nice sneaky way of getting a database printing update, tho can see the advantage of catching those banned from driving that give a false ID or drink drivers, is this fair & right?

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Just watched the report on the news, it is one of those "it's not compulsory"but woe betide if you do not comply.

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Sounds good to me as a law abiding citizen, I'd have nothing to fear and would voluntarily give a scan of my fingerprints.

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Again, if I’ve done now’t wrong, I’ll have now’t to fear. If they catch a few dozen illegal immigrants, rapists, escapees and the like each week, why not.

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Do the police actually stop motorists these days ? I always thought by the number of 'certain' people driving round without seatbelts that those days were long gone.

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Good point lancsdave, last time I was stopped was for driving with my spots on..It was a New Years Eve about three years ago. Not that I do anything to be stopped for.....

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If they do not have a record of the motorists’ fingerprints how will taking them at the roadside ID them? Will it also include any passengers? What will happen to the fingerprints afterwards?

I was under the impression that fingerprints are not taken until AFTER a person has been ARRESTED and then only AFTER they have been CHARGED.

The police can now issue ‘on the spot’ fines for unsocial or drunken behaviour. How long before the fingerprinting will apply to people on the street?

The police can now clock a vehicle and check to see if it is has Road Tax, Insurance, MOT if applicable and also the driver has a legitimate license. If it hasn’t got any one of those the car will be impounded and then crushed, as I understand, it after 7 days. But mistakes can happen as was clearly demonstrated during a TV programme a few days ago when a woman was stopped and the check revealed that she didn’t have insurance. She did have but didn’t have the insurance certificate with her. She was fortunate in that the police allowed her to ring her sister to get the insurance certificate and bring it to the ‘scene of the crime’. She was also fortunate that her sister arrived just as the tow truck was preparing to load the car onto the loader. She and the police parted company, but what a complete waste of police time, not forgetting the unfortunate woman’s time. Let’s not forget the tow truck. The owner would require paying for the wasted trip.

However if the woman had not been able to produce the required insurance certificate, her car would have been impounded and she would have been left on the road to make her own way home. She was also fortunate that this incident happened during daylight hours, but what if it had happened during the dark hours?

Whatever happened to the procedure where a motorist had 7 days to produce the required documents if the motorist was not carrying them at the time of the stopping by police?

This government with the aid of the police are going to get us all tagged and labelled by hook or by crook. So if the ID cards don’t do it this fingerprinting scheme will.

Someone please remind me that we are not galloping down the “Police State” road.

Come in Judge Dredd, your time is coming.

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You can refuse untill or if you are convicted they cannot force you to do it, ultimately the judge/magistrate can order you to do it or be in contempt of court.

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And what pray, will happen to these nabbed crims?......the prisons are bursting at the seams and judges are being told to limit custodial sentences.

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We have alot more information on this down here.

If you are pulled over and printed, it will take about 2/3 minutes to get the print processed on the computer data base. If there is no match for criminal activity, then the print will be wiped off the scanner; you have the option of waiting around for an extra few moments to see this occur on the scanner. What happens back with the main computer, I dunno.

Much more interesting here is the introduction of head cameras, which started this week in a couple of London Boroughs. This is a mini-videocam which the cops carry round on their shoulder or helmet and can be switched on when confronting drunken yobs prior to arrest. It should provide the sort of evidence to put an awful lot of do-gooding, civil- rights, taxpayer- subsidised solicitors out of business for good.

You all quite right about the current failings of the prison service; it's about time we brought back transportation, the threadmill and the lash. These are far more cost effective than locking people up for a few months in unbridled 5-star luxury, so the sooner we started using this form of punishment, the better for us all.

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How long before they can run a DNA check at the roadside? If you are clear there is nowt to fear but it sounds like a bit of a back door data collection service to me. There is a large part of the population against biometric ID cards so now they are finding other ways around this. Next would be a retina scan as they are as unique as fingerprints so the list could be endless. Ok I know that some on here are anti ID card but the fact the police are now getting other tools then ID caards it should be.

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These machines do not take your finger prints they just check if your index finger print matches any on the national database. Why keep papping on about a police state everytime some new technology becomes available to help our boys in blue recognise the scroats and the ten people driving about on one licence, the only people who should be moaning about this superb pieces of kit are the scum who ruin peoples lives day in day out, the uninsured drivers who kill children, the druggies who mug old ladies, and the rest of the law breaking gits.
Its do gooders that are the problem not the new technology or the police.

If you break the law worry.
If you don't have a good life.

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lol they already have your fingerprints hun ..

they dusted teh sailors down at preston docks ;)

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While I agree with anything that will make the job of the police easier......and that is apprehending criminals....what are the courts going to do with these people. I may be labouring a point here, but it seems to me that the punishments are laughable, and in no way a deterrent.

I also think it is a back door method of data collection, ready for the ID cards.

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OK! So these machines only take the fingerprint of a forefinger. So what? It is still a fingerprint that, we are led to believe, is unique to each person.

If the index finger print doesn’t match anything on the database firefighter753, what then? Next time it will because in spite of the claims that no data will be kept there is no guarantee that, that will be the case. It would be next to impossible to establish that the print has not been retained.

Whether you like it or not I will keep on about a police state because slowly but surely we are heading that way. New technology should be used to fight crime and gather evidence of the crime and not harass the innocent law abiding person. There are many, many more law abiding citizens than there are criminals. The police can find the manpower when it comes to policing a state visit or a legal demonstration or a football match. But they can’t find the manpower to police the streets. The cost of all this new technology would be better served by increasing police numbers.

I don’t break the law but I do worry and I have every reason to. I’ve been burgled 7 times, mugged once and attacked twice that led to ABH and GBH at my front and back door. In my previous home my kitchen window had a brick thrown through it, my minibus was vandalised then set on fire, my car was attacked and nearly all the windows were put through. Why? Two reasons – as an attendant sports leader at the Roman Road Community Centre I wouldn’t allow the local thugs and yobbos to take over the centre and it was my evidence that got one burglar and one attacker put away.

As each day passes I grow older and because I live on my own, become more vulnerable. The only time that I am likely to step out of my front door during the dark hours is if the flat is on fire. So where is my good life?

But you are right firefighter753 it is the do-gooders that are the problem - for interfering in the judicial system and preventing criminals getting real punishment for their crimes.

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I don't see what the fuss is about. When I went to see Uncle Sam, earlier this summer, I had a fingerprint scan taken at Atlanta airport. In this case, it can match me up to my passport. If it goes missing, no one else can fraudulently using it.

As said previously: if you are a scrote with previous form and a history of mis-demeanors, start worrying. If you lead a virtuous life and follow the path of righteousness, and generally keep your nose clean, then you've nowt to worry about.

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Jambutty, firstly I would like to sympathise with you on being the victim of so much nasty crime, no one deserves that.

I was chatting to a police colleague yesterday about the machines and he assured me that the fingerprint taken is no way recorded and that if the details of the print were recorded without the owners consent, the police would be liable to all sorts of legal action for the contravention of P.A.C.E, the human rights act and also the data protection act.

I asked what the advantages were of the machine, and was told - If a police officer stops someone in the street or in a vehicle at the moment and the person gives false details, the person is arrested, taken back to the police station and his details are checked. On average one person arrested for suspected of giving false details takes a police officer (usually 2) off the streets for about two hours. As most people who give false details are known to the police they will now think twice about giving false details on the streets as their identity can now be verified at the roadside in five minutes, thus saving two hours at the station, and keeping our police on the streets.

Another use of the machine is that every asylum seeker have their fingerprints and DNA taken when entering the country, so now all the illegal immigrants that have disappeared into the system can be slowly rounded up, identified instantly and the appropriate action taken.

And finally, any fingerprints taken from unsolved crimes around the country are stored on the database, so if the little scrote who burgled your house left a fingerprint it will have been recorded to your crime and put on the database. Now imagine this scenario the scrote who has never been caught so isn't known to the police, is walking down the street two months down the line three oclock in the morning , and is stopped by police, two months ago he would of given police his correct details and he would check out with no crime commited he would be released. Now its a different story the police say can you put your finger in this machine, five minutes later the machine is telling the police officer that this little scrotes fingerprint is linked to a burlary at your house and several others, and he is arrested.

The disavantage of these machines is that they are heavy.

They can harrass me as many times as they want, knowing that the next person they stop maybe the little get who burgled you.

Then they enter the judicial system which I totally agree with you about, which is a joke.:o

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Thanks for the sympathy bit firefighter753 but I got over the crimes over time.

It may well be the case today that the fingerprint is not retained but once the system is in place it would only need a new law to change this and this government, during the current Parliament, has brought in over 3,000 pieces of new legislation. It is only a matter of time before a future government passes the necessary legislation for all fingerprints to be retained on the police database. It would be next to impossible to establish that the fingerprint has not been retained.

Quote:

If a police officer stops someone in the street or in a vehicle at the moment and the person gives false details, the person is arrested, taken back to the police station and his details are checked.

How does the police officer know that any details given on the street by a stranger are false?

If I got stopped on the street, was asked my name and replied Penelope Dawson the cop would rightly be suspicious because as a general rule blokes do not have girls’ names. But if I answered Henry Marsden he would have to accept it. So what use would a fingerprint check be?

All this fingerprinting stuff is just an excuse to go fishing for evidence without suspicion of a specific crime being committed. It is tantamount to fingerprinting a whole neighbourhood to try and find any known criminals and that is an invasion of civil liberties.

Look what happens today – the police arrest someone on suspicion of committing a crime, (that means they have no real evidence that would stand up in court) impound the person’s personal belonging like computers and documents and then spend time searching them for evidence to convict them with. They do that with suspected terrorists and then spend the next 28 days searching for evidence and now the government is seeking 90 days detention.

Only a very naïve burglar will leave a fingerprint when burgling a house. In all seven burglaries in my house there were no fingerprints apart from mine and legitimate visitors. In fact on most occasions they didn’t even bother dusting around for prints because SOCO knew that there wouldn’t be any.

The machines may be heavy and unwieldy today but once upon a time a simple basic mobile phone was like a house brick and look at them now. It’s called progress!

There was a time when the police could only arrest someone if there was evidence of a crime being committed, although they could detain someone for questioning on suspicion alone. Today you can be arrested on just suspicion and that was the thin end of the wedge.

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Well according to the Lancashire Police Website you will have the chance of having your fingerprints took.

http://www.lancashire.police.uk/index.php?id=1291

Lancashire police are part of the trial on this. So if you get stopped you will have your fingerprints took.

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Oh no I will not!

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i dont mind being fingerprinted at all, had it done at a few american airports and it certainly didn,t bother me. and this kid has never been a goody goody - maybe you find that hard to believe,but its true.