Identity assurance – shall we vote on it?

For years now
the Cabinet Office have claimed
that they don't want to create a single, central national identity register.

Falsely, as it turns out.

They want to store a single, central identity-assured electoral roll
with the credit referencing agencies.

Lord Maxton: ... The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, in particular, roused me to my feet as I have one simple point to make. The Bill is designed to stop fraud and ought to be designed to encourage people to vote, and there is one simple way to deal with that. Unfortunately this House and the other place both voted to get rid of that simple way of dealing with this matter, which was the introduction of an identity card-a general register of all people. It would have been a compulsory identity card for everyone. It would have ensured that everyone was on the central register and we would not be in this position. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, led the campaign, as much as anybody did, against ID cards, which was a major error on his part. By the way, the technology on ID cards, or smart cards, has moved on extensively even since we abolished the proposal less than two years ago. Now we could have a smart card that would ensure that people were on a central register and the register itself would divide and set up online registers for the whole of the country. Each constituency would have a register, not completed by a registration officer or by individual registration but automatically: by pressing a series of buttons on a computer it would come up with the right answers ...

The Electoral Registration and Administration Bill began its committee stage last Monday, 29 October 2012. Lord Maxton's contribution ignores the fact that the ID cards scheme failed despite enjoying eight years, 2002-10, of unstinting political support from the European Commission, Whitehall, two Prime Ministers and five Home Secretaries, and despite eight years of hosing unlimited public money at management consultants, software houses and biometrics experts. It's just not that easy, my lord.

One of the lessons of 2002-10 has not been lost on John Reid:

Lord Reid of Cardowan: I am very grateful to the noble Lord [Lord Rennard] for giving way. I am not in principle against what he is suggesting but, as someone who bears the scars on my back of false accusations when in government of an intention to mine data, match data and cross-match data, can he tell us when the Liberal party came to the conclusion that it was perfectly legitimate to mine and cross-match the data from DVLA, from pensions, from national insurance, which the noble Lord mentioned, and from transport? Once you have created this precedent there will be very good reasons for using it, presumably with data from HMRC and others, right across the spectrum so it is not something that should be entered upon lightly.

According to the explanatory notes on the Bill, the objective is to "reduce electoral fraud by speeding up the implementation of individual voter registration". Draft legislation for Individual Electoral Registration (IER) was published on 30 June 2011. In addition to the legislation, there was an impact assessment and a statutory instrument on the pilot schemes needed for the data-matching that Lord Reid was talking about.

The first day's debate in the committee stage of the Bill is a magnificent cornucopia of Constitutional issues:

• Their lordships debated cross-referencing the electoral roll with DWP's National Insurance number database (NINO), with the equivalent database at the Department for Social Development (Northern Ireland), with HMRC's tax credit and child benefit databases, with Royal Mail's redirection service and with several Department for Education and Department for Transport databases. This is unprecedented. Is that legal? No. According to the impact assessment (p.2), "Key assumptions/sensitivities/risks: Data matching – national rollout would require primary legislation.".
• Did the pilot schemes suggest that it's worth introducing new primary legislation? Don't know. Haven't seen the results. Don't know how the tests were carried out. What were the protocols? What would constitute success? Was failure possible?
• Given that IER is meant to be voluntary, why are their lordships mooting civil penalties for failing to register? (Where have we come across that before? ID cards. Supposed to be voluntary. But anyone applying for a passport would automatically be entered on the National Identity Register. So they're not voluntary. Yes they are, says Charles Clarke, Home Secretary at the time, March 2006, because you don't have to apply for a passport, do you?)
• Why isn't the Department of Health involved?
• Is it true that the Department for Transport has pulled out?
• ...

There's too much there for a single post. Too many nuggets to mine. Let's pick on just one:

Lord Wallace of Saltaire: My Lords, before I address the amendments directly, I take up some of the broader issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Reid, which were touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, in our first Committee session before dinner. They are extremely wide issues and I agree that they are important. It was for that precise reason that I went to be briefed by the head of the Government Digital Service last week. As the noble Lord, Lord Reid, pointed out, as we move towards cloud computing, the questions of where data are stored, to what uses they are put and how far they are shared become a very delicate and important area. I also flag up that the question of what is a public database and what is a private one becomes a little more difficult than it is now. There is a whole set of issues there that we need to return to in other contexts because this has the potential to transform the way in which society, the economy and government work as a whole. I was assured that the protocols that now govern what is called identity verification-the very limited use of data sharing to ask, "Is this person real?"-are strong and, as used by the credit agencies and others, provide firewalls which prevent too much information being shared. Some of us might differ on how far we would be happy for the DWP, HMRC and the National Health Service to share information on what people claim to be earning, claiming or whatever; those questions will also come into that debate. I strongly agree that this is an extremely important long-term issue. However, if I understand it correctly-and I am at the absolute outer limits of my knowledge of computers at this point-I am told that one does not need to amass new databases. That is the difference between what is now beginning to happen and the old ID debate ...

So we're all moving "towards cloud computing", are we? How carefully did ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken, "the head of the Government Digital Service", explain to Lord Wallace, a man "at the absolute outer limits of [his] knowledge of computers", that cloud computing means losing control of your data?

Is it right for Lord Wallace to be "assured that the protocols that now govern what is called identity verification ... are strong"? No-one else believes that. Why does ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken believe it?

Did ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken take Lord Wallace through GPG45? That's the good practice guide, no.45, issued by CESG, on Validating and Verifying the Identity of an Individual in Support of HMG Online Services. Do Facebook and Twitter meet the criteria set out there? Or didn't the matter crop up in conversation?

52. In time other forms of verification may become available which means that a person may not be required to produce their NINO and DOB when making a new application to register – the legislation has been drafted with this in mind. On 18 May 2011 the Government announced plans for the development of a consistent, customer-centric approach to digital identity assurance across all public services. The intention is to create a market of certified identity assurance services delivered by a range of private sector and mutualised suppliers so that people will be able to use the service of their choice to prove their identity when accessing any public service. The draft legislation will allow digital identity assurance to be used in future to verify an application to be added to the electoral register. Additionally it may be possible for verification to take place at local authority level using similar local arrangements. We will monitor these developments with a view to improving the verification process if it helps to simplify the system and encourages more people to register.

That's what it says in the draft legislation. Ex-Guardian man Mike Bracken was meant to announce who would be the UK's so-called "identity providers" by 30 September 2012. We're still waiting.

He'd better hurry up. He's promised to have an identity assurance service "operational" for 21 million Universal Credit claimants by Spring 2013.

Some of the proposed suppliers of identity assurance, the social networks like Facebook, the custodians of the strong protocols Lord Wallace is hoping for, have been irremediably debunked by Whitehall's own security experts who recommend lying to them if you don't want to suffer identity fraud.

And the others? The banks? And the mobile phone suppliers? Do they now see the wisdom of the Department of Health in not getting involved in the first place? Will they now follow the example of the Department for Transport and withdraw?

13. Maintaining a more accurate and complete register will deliver benefits beyond addressing the potential for fraud in elections. The full register is already made available under current legislation to a number of government organisations for official purposes, and the edited version of the full register is available to anyone for any purpose. In addition the full register is also supplied to credit reference agencies to assist financial institutions in the UK to verify a person’s identity when processing an application for credit or opening a bank account.

Damian Green MP feeding disk drives
from the failed UK ID card scheme
and the credibility of the Home Office
into an industrial shredder
Photograph: SA Mathieson/Guardian

For years now, the Cabinet Office have claimed that they've learnt the lesson, they don't want to create a single, central national identity register. Now look. Look at para.13 of the draft legislation. They just want to keep a full copy of the identity-assured electoral roll stored with the credit referencing agencies. Who, if they've got any sense, and they have, will extract themselves from this eye of newt goulash faster than a speeding ballot.

The debate in the Lords was intelligent and informed, elegant and patient, and tirelessly open. An example to us all.

Identity assurance – shall we vote on it?

For years now
the Cabinet Office have claimed
that they don't want to create a single, central national identity register.

Falsely, as it turns out.

They want to store a single, central identity-assured electoral roll
with the credit referencing agencies.

Lord Maxton: ... The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, in particular, roused me to my feet as I have one simple point to make. The Bill is designed to stop fraud and ought to be designed to encourage people to vote, and there is one simple way to deal with that. Unfortunately this House and the other place both voted to get rid of that simple way of dealing with this matter, which was the introduction of an identity card-a general register of all people. It would have been a compulsory identity card for everyone. It would have ensured that everyone was on the central register and we would not be in this position. The noble Lord, Lord Rennard, led the campaign, as much as anybody did, against ID cards, which was a major error on his part. By the way, the technology on ID cards, or smart cards, has moved on extensively even since we abolished the proposal less than two years ago. Now we could have a smart card that would ensure that people were on a central register and the register itself would divide and set up online registers for the whole of the country. Each constituency would have a register, not completed by a registration officer or by individual registration but automatically: by pressing a series of buttons on a computer it would come up with the right answers ...

The Electoral Registration and Administration Bill began its committee stage last Monday, 29 October 2012. Lord Maxton's contribution ignores the fact that the ID cards scheme failed despite enjoying eight years, 2002-10, of unstinting political support from the European Commission, Whitehall, two Prime Ministers and five Home Secretaries, and despite eight years of hosing unlimited public money at management consultants, software houses and biometrics experts. It's just not that easy, my lord.

John Vine report published

John Vine CBE QPM is the Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency (UKBA). His report on the Brodie Clark affair was published on Monday 20 February 2012. Like the Home Affairs Committee report Inquiry into the provision of UK Border Controls published a month earlier on Thursday 19 January 2012, it is a historic document. It criticises the Executive and yet, there it is, in a brave move of the Home Secretary's, it’s been published by the Executive.

If you went to bed on 20 February 2012 having learnt about Mr Vine’s report only from reading the Guardian live blog (starting at 4:12 p.m.) and from hearing Yvette Cooper talking about it on the radio, then you probably slept badly with thoughts of something sacred (England) having been defiled (by the invention of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown) disturbing your sleep and perhaps remembering that Hopkins poem, “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,/More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring ...”.

Your mood will not have been improved in the morning by the woodentop predictability of the Daily Mail, with their Britain's 'Mickey Mouse' border controls let 500,000 into the country without any checks for FIVE YEARS headline and so you will have sat down to write your blog, entered the bilious title which wrote itself – John Vine signs death certificate – Home Office RIP – and then ... and then thought perhaps it might be a good idea to read the report first.

It's long. There's a lot in it. There's a lot to think about.

First things first, Mr Vine's report describes an exemplary piece of detective work. He has abided by his terms of reference, the work was done quickly and apparently thoroughly and he writes clearly. He hasn't been cross-examined in an open court of law, of course, but prima facie some of his findings look pretty damning.

Writing about the "intelligence-led" trial in Chapter 4 of his report, he successfully debunks UKBA, who obviously haven't got a clue how to run a trial. At para.4.103 he fingers UKBA for claiming that the trial had been a success on the basis of certain drug seizures they made, without being able to prove that they made the drug seizures because of the trial. If drugs companies conducted trials in the same way, we'd all be dead.

No-one knows what "intelligence-led" means, least of all the poor old Home Secretary – regular readers will remember this interchange when she gave evidence in front of the Home Affairs Committee:

Q33 Michael Ellis: ... can you elaborate on what is meant by intelligence-led security measures? ... Theresa May: Indeed. The basis on which the pilot was to operate was that it was to enable a greater focus on those who were at higher risk. Intelligence-led, led also at the discretion of the officers at the border so that they would be assessing within the two categories of EEA nationals and the biometric chips, and EEA national children ...

Mr Vine's dissection of the Secure ID business in Chapter 3 of his report is minute. "Secure ID" is a misnomer and denotes checking travellers' fingerprints.

Mr Vine is at some pains to show how the failure of immigration officers to do their Secure ID checks can be explained by their inadvertently confusing "Level 2" and "Scenario 2" (para.4.39) or by their failure to understand that Damian Green MP's approval for the suspension of Secure ID checks was a "provisional" approval (para.3.67).

But in the end he has to give up and decide that the immigration officers at Heathrow, in particular, jolly well knew they were flouting ministerial instructions when they suspended Secure ID.

Why would they do that? Are they all rogues?

Maybe not. Maybe they suspended Secure ID because they knew it was a waste of time that they didn't have to waste.

Brodie Clark said when he gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee that fingerprint checks are the least reliable security/identity checks available and that they are the ninth and bottom priority. Mr Vine doesn't disagree. Indeed he quotes Brodie Clark in this connection saying that there have only been seven "hits" from Secure ID (3.13) since it was introduced in 2009-10.

Let's take a bit of time out here for some numbers. In the first 18 months of the coalition government, the period ending 31 October 2011, two days before Brodie Clark was suspended, the following payments were made by UKBA to contractors involved with computerised border security systems including fingerprint-checking:

Atos ............................... 67,461,976
CapGemini .............................. 90,000
CSC (Computer Sciences Corporation) 140,023,212
Detica ................................ 821,034
Fujitsu ........................... 175,743,106
IBM ............................... 155,438,327
Morpho .............................. 1,227,389
PA Consulting ....................... 3,428,522
QinetiQ ............................... 582,868
Serco ............................. 103,590,132
Steria ............................. 19,084,494
VF Worldwide ....................... 67,416,851

Total ............................ £734,907,911


Source: http://data.gov.uk/dataset/financial-transactions-data-ho

Did those seven hits Brodie Clark talks of cost £105,000,000 each? A cheap mind might say so. Money is the only currency some people can deal in.

But Mr Vine offers us something subtler and more human. He contrasts the pestilentially inflexible computer system which made it hard for immigration officers to collate the statistics of their drugs seizures (4.98) with the benefit of human beings with the gift of judgement, specifically an immigration officer faced with a traveller with impeccable credentials who turned out to have 93 packets of cocaine inside him (Figure 12, p.66).

The computer wouldn't have discovered that cocaine. The traveller's papers were in order. The immigration officer did. He disobeyed instructions and questioned the traveller. He had a hunch. He had a certain amount of autonomy and discretion. And presumably a sound understanding of his duty and an admirable commitment. Which one does the Daily Mail want? Which one do you want?

If you are persuaded that border security depends on people and not on senseless automata then, the more you read John Vine's report, the more you understand what that belief means. It means that forms won't always be filled in correctly. It means that the people at head office will add up the figures and get a different total. It means that one man's "provisional" is another man's "unqualified". No computer would confuse "Level 2" with "Scenario 2", but then no computer will find those 93 packets of cocaine.

Chapter 2 of Mr Vine's report is devoted to the Warnings Index (WI). The WI checks have had to be suspended too often, usually for good reasons (2.21) ...

For example, on 15 July 2011, 100% checks were suspended for one hour and 20 minutes and the reason for this was recorded as “Coaches blocking roundabout”, whilst on 16 July 2011, the reason recorded was “Coaches tailed back to motorway”.

 ... but not always for good reasons. Figure 6 on p.23 of Mr Vine's report lists suspensions of WI checks by port, ending with 106 suspensions at "Other ports combined". Mr Vine attaches a footnote, footnote no.13, one for the history books, explaining that these other combined ports include three holiday destinations. One of them is Disneyland Paris, side-splittingly referred to in the Daily Mail headline above. The three holiday destinations reported just one suspension each, which sounds statistically insignificant. It's just that the suspension went on in each case for four years, Yvette Cooper please note.

It's not good. In fact, it's bad. But look why it's bad. It's profiling.

Some clot decided that no-one coming home from Disneyland Paris was likely to be a security threat and stuck to it for four years. If you believe in the efficacy of targeting, though, this is the kind of result you must expect. This, and the rogue "Operation Savant" uncovered by Mr Vine and dealt with in Chapter 5 of his report.

It does have funny consequences. Also in Chapter 5, Mr Vine records the procedure at Portsmouth, where immigration officers didn't bother to "open the chip" in ePassports, except to annoy French travellers.

But in general, think twice before agreeing that profiling is a good idea.

It sounds targeted or intelligence-led or risk-based, it sounds advanced and scientific. The suggestion is of a crack team of 26 PhDs in the UKBA command and control bunker using advanced pattern-recognition to detect, hidden away in a mineful of data, the geometry of an organised crime or a planned act of terrorism. But as no-one knows the shape of organised crime or terrorism it's baloney.

Mr Vine says in his introduction that "there is nothing I have discovered which could not have been identified and addressed by senior managers exercising proper oversight" (p.6). Which senior managers does he mean?

Go back to the Home Affairs Committee report. The Committee say:

14. ... The UK Border Agency is described as "an executive agency of the Home Office" but it is in fact an integral part of the Department. While it has its own management and budgetary structure, the UK Border Agency is still under the aegis of the Home Office and it no longer formulates its own policy—that is the responsibility of Home Office Ministers, on the advice of Home Office and UK Border Agency officials. 22. ... If we are to accept the version of events as recounted by Ministers and senior Home Office staff then it creates the impression that Mr Clark was running the UK Border Force without effective checks or balances from either his superiors or immediate colleagues despite the fact that the Border Force is not a separate organisation, nor even part of an independent agency, but is part of the mainstream responsibility of the Home Office and comes directly under the responsibility of the Permanent Secretary and the Board of the Department.

So that's who Mr Vine thinks should have exercised proper oversight. The problems aren't all the responsibility of Brodie Clark and a few senior UKBA staff at Heathrow. Responsibility is shared right up into the heart of the Home Office, right up to Dame Helen Ghosh, the Permanent Secretary. And the problems didn't start last year when she started. Dame Helen inherited a lot of the mess from Sir David Normington, her predecessor as Permanent Secretary, who remains as silent about her travails as his ex-boss, Sir Gus, now Lord O'Donnell.

What's the solution? Split the Border Force from the rest of UKBA? That's obviously what Dame Helen and Theresa May have decided to do. A mistake. Especially if they accompany that move with a lot of opprobrium heaped undiscriminatingly on the heads of all their staff. There are success stories. Like the introduction of checks on lost and stolen passports. Success stories which it might be nice if Mr Vine had included in his report.

It could work, though, if UKBA stop wasting lorry-loads of public money on glitzy technology and plausible consultants and contractors and spend a bit instead on the human beings that border security really relies on.

Is there any hope of that happening? On past experience, no. But just maybe the Financial Times story about the deployment of smart gates at UK airports being delayed in advance of Mr Vine's report could herald a break with past experience – maybe UKBA will abort the deployment of smart gates and cut back on their staff cutbacks.

John Vine report published

John Vine CBE QPM is the Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency (UKBA). His report on the Brodie Clark affair was published on Monday 20 February 2012. Like the Home Affairs Committee report Inquiry into the provision of UK Border Controls published a month earlier on Thursday 19 January 2012, it is a historic document. It criticises the Executive and yet, there it is, in a brave move of the Home Secretary's, it’s been published by the Executive.

John Vine report delayed

Hat tip: Anonymous

Home Office Publications:

Report by the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency - WMS This written ministerial stement (sic) was laid in the House of Commons on 31 January 2012 by Theresa May, and in the House of Lords by Lord Henley. Secretary of State for the Home Department (Theresa May): Following the resignation of Brodie Clark, a senior UK Border Agency official, last November, I asked John Vine, the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency, to carry out an independent investigation into border checks conducted by the UK Border Agency. Mr Vine has asked for more time to complete his investigation. Once I have received his final report I will update the House after constituency recess on both the findings of the report and on the action the government will take. Tuesday, 31 January 2012

John Vine report delayed

Hat tip: Anonymous

Home Office Publications:

Report by the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency - WMS This written ministerial stement (sic) was laid in the House of Commons on 31 January 2012 by Theresa May, and in the House of Lords by Lord Henley. Secretary of State for the Home Department (Theresa May): Following the resignation of Brodie Clark, a senior UK Border Agency official, last November, I asked John Vine, the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency, to carry out an independent investigation into border checks conducted by the UK Border Agency. Mr Vine has asked for more time to complete his investigation. Once I have received his final report I will update the House after constituency recess on both the findings of the report and on the action the government will take. Tuesday, 31 January 2012

John Vine, Brodie Clark, Keith Vaz, Theresa May, Damian Green and Helen Ghosh

Today's the day. The deadline for John Vine, Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, to submit his report on the Brodie Clark affair to the Home Office.

Will the public be allowed to see it? This matter concerns our border security and it concerns the safety of the 2012 Olympics. It's a matter of public interest.

But don't get your hopes up. Look what happened to the Home Affairs Committee.

Along with the three investigations into the Brodie Clark affair launched by the Home Office, the Home Affairs Committee looked into it and published their report a couple of weeks ago, Inquiry into the provision of UK Border Controls:

2. The precise facts of the case are disputed and the Home Office has denied us access to original documents that would have helped us to clarify the sequence of events ... 9. The Home Office has refused to provide us with a copy of the HOWI Guidance, a document we believe to be of importance as it has been discussed extensively in oral evidence to this Committee, as well as in the House itself ... 18. ... We have requested a copy of the slide presentation from the Home Office, which again has been refused. Without access to the slide, we are unable to comment on ... 27. Despite agreeing to make both the Home Office Warnings Index Guidelines and the periodic updates available to us when she came before us on 8 November, the Home Secretary has since refused to provide us with these documents ... notwithstanding any internal departmental investigations, these documents would have assisted our inquiry in confirming witness accounts and we would normally expect a Government of any party to acquiesce to such a request from a Select Committee. We recommend that the Home Secretary deposit copies of all the documents that have been made available to the three internal investigations in the Library of this House. This will allow this Committee to reach an informed conclusion of our own and would be consistent with the Government's commitment to transparency and accountability ...

The House of Commons, in the form of the Home Affairs Committee, can go hang. Parliament may call itself "supreme", but the Executive is unmoved. They will spend our money on useless technology – £491,304,533.51 and counting – and (constructively) dismiss anyone who dares to tell us that it is useless and there is nothing that Parliament can do about it.

John Vine, Brodie Clark, Keith Vaz, Theresa May, Damian Green and Helen Ghosh

Today's the day. The deadline for John Vine, Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, to submit his report on the Brodie Clark affair to the Home Office.

Will the public be allowed to see it? This matter concerns our border security and it concerns the safety of the 2012 Olympics. It's a matter of public interest.

But don't get your hopes up. Look what happened to the Home Affairs Committee.

Theresa May, Damian Green, Keith Vaz, Roger Gale, Yvette Cooper, Alan Johnson, Jacqui Smith, John Reid, Charles Clarke, David Blunkett, Helen Ghosh, John Vine, Brodie Clark, Gus O'Donnell, David Normington, James Hall, Jackie Keane and IBM

John Vine's job becomes more interesting by the day.

In the Sunday Times* of 8 January 2012, Isabel Oakeshott and Mark Hookham wrote:

Border staff give up fingerprinting of Eurotunnel stowaways Border staff have stopped fingerprinting illegal immigrants caught trying to enter Britain through the Channel Tunnel. Documents seen by The Sunday Times reveal how stowaways discovered in cars, lorries and coaches inside the Eurotunnel compound at Coquelles, north of Calais, no longer have their fingerprints routinely taken. The revelation will renew pressure on Theresa May, the home secretary, who was last year embroiled in controversy over the secret relaxation of British border controls. That scandal led to the resignation of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) chief, Brodie Clark. Damian Green, the immigration minister, has defended the abandonment of the “lengthy” process of taking fingerprints, saying UKBA staff were better served searching vehicles instead ... Roger Gale, the Conservative MP for North Thanet who wrote to the Home Office to demand an explanation ... In a letter to Gale, Green confirmed that ... Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, described Green’s letter as “astonishing” and said: “By not even bothering to fingerprint anyone, the government is sending a signal that this is not a serious offence and people should feel free to keep trying.”

"No, Ms Cooper", Mr Vine may say, "by not even bothering to fingerprint anyone, the government is sending a signal that this technology doesn't work, it's a waste of time and the Border Force has better things to do than play charades.

"You say you're astonished. But why?

"Do you realise, Ms Cooper, that the fingerprint technology used at the border isn't the traditional police technology in which the world has grown confident over the past century and more? It's flat print fingerprinting. It's quick, it's clean, there's no expert required and it doesn't work. Why do you insist on defending a technology you know nothing about?

"Please don't give me that look, Ms Cooper. It's not just you. Alan Johnson fell for it. So did Jacqui Smith. And John Reid and Charles Clarke and David Blunkett. Not to mention Theresa May. Why did she go in to bat for a technology that doesn't work?

"How many degrees of freedom, would you say, does a biometric need, to be able to identify every member of a population of 60 million? What's the minimum false positive identification rate we need, in your experience, to keep the border safe, what's the correspondingly high false negative identification rate and how many extra Border Force staff do you need every day, to conduct the hundreds of thousands of redundant secondary inspections? In your opinion, would you say that biometrics is currently under statistical control? What precisely is your take on the admissibility of flat print fingerprint evidence in a court of law?

"You don't know, do you, and neither does Ms May, but the thing is, Ms Cooper, no-one actually expects you politicians to understand the technicalities.

"That's what officials are for.

"The real question is, why have all those officials at the Home Office stood by for years and watched as you politicians have committed yourselves more and more irrevocably to biometrics?

"Well not Brodie Clark, he hasn't, he's told Keith Vaz that flat print fingerprinting is a waste of time.

"But the rest of them. O'Donnell's getting a peerage. Normington's become First Civil Service Commissioner. James Hall's retired. They've all got away, and meanwhile some of the more vindictive types want to strip Brodie Clark of his pension.

"It's a monumental mess of a legacy for Helen Ghosh to sort out. Telling Jackie Keane she's been wasting her time won't be easy. Neither will telling IBM their services are no longer required. Still. Icy calm under fire. That's what they're bred for, these permanent secretaries.

"Think of me this afternoon with the cold towel round my head, Ms Cooper, I've got to write a report about Brodie Clark being suspended for doing what UKBA are now doing as a matter of policy. Piece of cake for you politicians, I imagine, but for an ex-copper ...".

----------
* If you don't have a subscription to the Times, you can read the same article in the Telegraph, where it's attributed to someone called "Daily Telegraph Reporter".

Theresa May, Damian Green, Keith Vaz, Roger Gale, Yvette Cooper, Alan Johnson, Jacqui Smith, John Reid, Charles Clarke, David Blunkett, Helen Ghosh, John Vine, Brodie Clark, Gus O'Donnell, David Normington, James Hall, Jackie Keane and IBM

John Vine's job becomes more interesting by the day.

In the Sunday Times* of 8 January 2012, Isabel Oakeshott and Mark Hookham wrote:

Border staff give up fingerprinting of Eurotunnel stowaways Border staff have stopped fingerprinting illegal immigrants caught trying to enter Britain through the Channel Tunnel. Documents seen by The Sunday Times reveal how stowaways discovered in cars, lorries and coaches inside the Eurotunnel compound at Coquelles, north of Calais, no longer have their fingerprints routinely taken. The revelation will renew pressure on Theresa May, the home secretary, who was last year embroiled in controversy over the secret relaxation of British border controls. That scandal led to the resignation of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) chief, Brodie Clark. Damian Green, the immigration minister, has defended the abandonment of the “lengthy” process of taking fingerprints, saying UKBA staff were better served searching vehicles instead ... Roger Gale, the Conservative MP for North Thanet who wrote to the Home Office to demand an explanation ... In a letter to Gale, Green confirmed that ... Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, described Green’s letter as “astonishing” and said: “By not even bothering to fingerprint anyone, the government is sending a signal that this is not a serious offence and people should feel free to keep trying.”

"No, Ms Cooper", Mr Vine may say, "by not even bothering to fingerprint anyone, the government is sending a signal that this technology doesn't work, it's a waste of time and the Border Force has better things to do than play charades.

"You say you're astonished. But why?

"Do you realise, Ms Cooper, that the fingerprint technology used at the border isn't the traditional police technology in which the world has grown confident over the past century and more? It's flat print fingerprinting. It's quick, it's clean, there's no expert required and it doesn't work. Why do you insist on defending a technology you know nothing about?

"Please don't give me that look, Ms Cooper. It's not just you. Alan Johnson fell for it. So did Jacqui Smith. And John Reid and Charles Clarke and David Blunkett. Not to mention Theresa May. Why did she go in to bat for a technology that doesn't work?

"How many degrees of freedom, would you say, does a biometric need, to be able to identify every member of a population of 60 million? What's the minimum false positive identification rate we need, in your experience, to keep the border safe, what's the correspondingly high false negative identification rate and how many extra Border Force staff do you need every day, to conduct the hundreds of thousands of redundant secondary inspections? In your opinion, would you say that biometrics is currently under statistical control? What precisely is your take on the admissibility of flat print fingerprint evidence in a court of law?

"You don't know, do you, and neither does Ms May, but the thing is, Ms Cooper, no-one actually expects you politicians to understand the technicalities.

"That's what officials are for.

"The real question is, why have all those officials at the Home Office stood by for years and watched as you politicians have committed yourselves more and more irrevocably to biometrics?

"Well not Brodie Clark, he hasn't, he's told Keith Vaz that flat print fingerprinting is a waste of time.

"But the rest of them. O'Donnell's getting a peerage. Normington's become First Civil Service Commissioner. James Hall's retired. They've all got away, and meanwhile some of the more vindictive types want to strip Brodie Clark of his pension.

"It's a monumental mess of a legacy for Helen Ghosh to sort out. Telling Jackie Keane she's been wasting her time won't be easy. Neither will telling IBM their services are no longer required. Still. Icy calm under fire. That's what they're bred for, these permanent secretaries.

"Think of me this afternoon with the cold towel round my head, Ms Cooper, I've got to write a report about Brodie Clark being suspended for doing what UKBA are now doing as a matter of policy. Piece of cake for you politicians, I imagine, but for an ex-copper ...".

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* If you don't have a subscription to the Times, you can read the same article in the Telegraph, where it's attributed to someone called "Daily Telegraph Reporter".