Monday 28 May 2012

GreenInk 7 – A good day for criminals

Let's see if the Telegraph publish this:
From: David Moss
Sent: 28 May 2012 12:18
To: 'dtletters@telegraph.co.uk'
Subject: A good day for criminals

Sir

On 23 May 2012 the Metropolitan Police issued a press release announcing that they are now using mobile fingerprint equipment. Patrolling policemen will check the fingerprints of suspects they have stopped in the street and let them go if their prints are not on file, thereby saving time.

The only figures published by the Home Office suggest that this fingerprinting technology fails about 20 percent of the time – in about 20 percent of cases no match will be made even if the subject's prints are on file. Which suggests that the chances of guilty people being taken down to the station and arrested have just dropped by about 20 percent. Not only in the Met but in 27 other police forces.


Perhaps Nick Herbert, the policing minister at the Home Office, would like to comment on this new way of saving police time.

Yours
David Moss

GreenInk 7 – A good day for criminals

Let's see if the Telegraph publish this:
From: David Moss
Sent: 28 May 2012 12:18
To: 'dtletters@telegraph.co.uk'
Subject: A good day for criminals

Sir

On 23 May 2012 the Metropolitan Police issued a press release announcing that they are now using mobile fingerprint equipment. Patrolling policemen will check the fingerprints of suspects they have stopped in the street and let them go if their prints are not on file, thereby saving time.

The only figures published by the Home Office suggest that this fingerprinting technology fails about 20 percent of the time – in about 20 percent of cases no match will be made even if the subject's prints are on file. Which suggests that the chances of guilty people being taken down to the station and arrested have just dropped by about 20 percent. Not only in the Met but in 27 other police forces.


Perhaps Nick Herbert, the policing minister at the Home Office, would like to comment on this new way of saving police time.

Yours
David Moss

Thursday 24 May 2012

Police forces all over the UK are introducing mobile fingerprint equipment. Result? Approximately 20% of the criminals who would otherwise have been taken down to the station will now be asked politely to go on their way


The Guardian tell us today that the Metropolitan Police have bought themselves some new equipment – mobile fingerprint readers. They are the 25th UK force to do so.

It all seems very sensible:
One of the aims of the technology is to cut the number of trips police make to the police station, so that officers can spend more time on the frontline.

Mark Rowley, assistant commissioner at the Met, said: "Evidence has shown that a full identification arrest can tie-up both the subject and the police officer for several hours. Even a traditional identity check conducted on the street can take an extended period of time to complete.

"It is effective particularly in revealing serious and violent offenders who will do everything they can to prevent the police from knowing their true identities."
It isn't.

Because the failure rate on this technology is about 20%*.

In the case of people whose fingerprints are on file, about 20%* of the time that fact will not be discovered using this technology.

To be slightly more technical:
  • When the Home Office tested flat print fingerprinting in the UKPS biometrics enrolment trial back in 2004 they found that the false non-match rate was 19 or 20 percent*. Nick Herbert, say, would be told by the system that he was not Nick Herbert. His prints didn't match anything on the database. A non-match. A false non-match, as it happens, as Nick Herbert had just registered his prints on the database five minutes before.
  • That's how the trial was conducted. 10,000 of us registered our faces and our fingerprints and our irisprints and five minutes later we tested to see if we could have our identity verified using one or other of those biometrics. Flat print fingerprints failed 19-20 percent of the time. Face recognition failed between 31 and 52 percent of the time which is why the smart gates at our airports and every other instance of automated face recognition are guaranteed to be a waste of time and money.
Nick Herbert is the policing minister. He and the Home Office have not published the results of any flat print fingerprint trials since then. At least one trial has been performed:
The NPIA signed a contract with 3M Cogent in 2010 for mobile fingerprint identification devices. The deal followed field trials involving 28 police forces using Lantern devices to test how mobile fingerprinting performed in an operational environment.
But the Home Office refuse to publish the results. So as far as we know – we, the public – the false non-match rate remains approximately 20%.

Which means that out of all the wanted criminals who are stopped and whose prints are on IDENT1 – the national fingerprint database – 20% will falsely not match and be allowed to go on their way.

There's a question for Mr Herbert forming at the back of your mind, isn't there – do you know what you're doing?

If he wants to prove that the answer is yes, and that he's not undermining the fight against crime and wasting our money at the same time, then Mr Herbert must publish the Lantern trial results. Nothing else will be convincing.

The chances of the Home Office publishing those results? See yesterday's hell-freezes-over press release.

It's not just DMossEsq:
----------

* Please see UK Passport Service Biometrics Enrolment Trial Report May 2005, Management Summary, Key Findings, para.1.2.1.4, p.10:
Fingerprint verification success

• The majority of participants achieved successful verification on fingerprint, with rates of 81% for Quota participants and 80% for Disabled participants. One of the factors influencing failure was that the single fingerprint device used for verification occasionally did not record sufficient detail from the fingers.

• Younger participants had a higher fingerprint verification success rate than older participants.

Updated 20.2.18

It's nearly four years since the blog post above was published. Not a single success story for mobile fingerprinting has been told. Four years. Zero results.

Unabashed, Yorkshire cops have begun using on-the-spot fingerprint scanners.

The difference this time is that the policemen on the street will be able to interrogate not just IDENT1 – the national criminal fingerprint database – but also IABS, the Immigration and Asylum Biometrics System: "The scanners link up to an app on cops' smartphones – which is already available to all 5,500 frontline officers – and run the prints against the UK's criminal fingerprint and biometrics database (IDENT1) and the Immigration and Asylum Biometrics System (IABS)".

What is unchanged is the 20% figure. It remains the case that 20% of those stopped by the police will be falsely not matched. Thanks to this flaky biometrics technology, wanted criminals will be asked to move along when actually they should be detained.

Police forces all over the UK are introducing mobile fingerprint equipment. Result? Approximately 20% of the criminals who would otherwise have been taken down to the station will now be asked politely to go on their way


The Guardian tell us today that the Metropolitan Police have bought themselves some new equipment – mobile fingerprint readers. They are the 25th UK force to do so.

It all seems very sensible:
One of the aims of the technology is to cut the number of trips police make to the police station, so that officers can spend more time on the frontline.

Mark Rowley, assistant commissioner at the Met, said: "Evidence has shown that a full identification arrest can tie-up both the subject and the police officer for several hours. Even a traditional identity check conducted on the street can take an extended period of time to complete.

"It is effective particularly in revealing serious and violent offenders who will do everything they can to prevent the police from knowing their true identities."
It isn't.

Wednesday 23 May 2012

The Home Office, Heathrow Airport, the security of the UK border and the safety of the Olympics

Here's a copy of a press release that's just been issued. Forgot to mention the French. Zut. They're lapping it up, too, just like the Indians.




PRESS RELEASE

To:

Home Office

OIG (re US-VISIT)

IDABC (re OSCIE)

China (re Golden Shield)

Pakistan (re NADRA)

FBI (re NGI)

UIDAI (re Aadhaar)

Agencies

The Home Office – Misfeasance in public office
23 May 2012
Six questions for editors to ponder:
  • The Home Office have been asked to reassure the public by publishing a justification for spending public money on biometrics technology they've previously proved to be useless. For 2½ years they've refused. Nor did they present any evidence as to the reliability of their chosen biometrics to the court. Why? Is it because they can't? Is it because there is no justification and our money is, indeed, being wasted?
  • The court sees no iniquity in that potential waste of money and describes it as not "in itself or in any way material". If this isn't an iniquity, what is?
  • We are assured by the Home Office and the court that the procurement of IABS didn't break any UK or EU rules. That finding of the court is accepted but so what? The Home Office are still refusing to release the IBM trial report to the public. They go further. The Home Office say the trial was conducted under such specific constraints that reading the report wouldn’t tell the public much. In other words they admit that they have no justification whatever for spending our money on biometrics. The procurement complies with the rules but it could still be iniquitous and the Home Office could still be guilty of misfeasance in public office.
  • Dame Helen Ghosh, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, told the Home Affairs Committee that "... there are plans ... to reduce the staff of the Border Force by around 900 people ... that is driven as much by technological introductions like e-gates, as well as a risk-based approach. Border Force will be getting smaller". Is it wise to replace human beings with technology that costs more and doesn't work?
  • Rob Whiteman, Chief Executive of what's left of the UK Border Agency, says of IABS in the March 2012 issue of the staff magazine that "the system, delivered by the agency in partnership with Suppliers IBM, Morpho, Fujitsu, Atos Origin and Software AG, is the first multi-modal biometric matching system. It provides greater accuracy in fingerprint matching together with an integrated facial matching element. It delivers a more comprehensive service, underpinning the agency’s objective to secure our border and reduce immigration". It isn't the first. Pakistan's was the first, and much good it's done that unfortunate country. The IABS biometrics provided by Morpho could be more reliable than the previous system but still useless. Just a little less useless. Is Mr Whiteman misleading his staff as to the history and the reliability of UKBA's biometrics?
  • Sir David Normington, Dame Helen's predecessor, caused Lin Homer and Brodie Clark to write to David Moss asserting that smart gates were being installed at UK airports on the basis of a trial at Manchester Airport. When John Vine, the Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, as he then was, reported on his May 2010 inspection of Manchester Airport, he said "we could find no overall plan to evaluate the success or otherwise of the facial recognition gates at Manchester Airport and would urge the Agency to do so [as] soon as possible". This evidence of the Home Office consistently misleading the public, Parliament, ministers, the media and its staff was put before the court. The Home Office made no response. Neither did the court in its decision. The allegation is a serious one. Why doesn't it warrant a response?
At the oral hearing in the matter of David Moss v Information Commissioner and the Home Office held on 24 February 2012, David Moss turned up in court and so did the Information Commissioner's staff and his barrister, but the Home Office didn't.
Why not?
The hearing concerned the Home Office's Immigration and Asylum Biometric System. IABS was due to go live at the border by the end of 2011 under the direction of Ms Jackie Keane, a senior civil servant at the UK Border Agency. She missed that date but bits of IABS went live at the end of February, with the results we all saw in the ensuing weeks, Heathrow at 'breaking' point as Border Force struggles to cope, leaked memos warn, ‘Minister lying over Heathrow queues’ says BA chief, and so on. We may surmise that the Home Office were too busy to attend.
On the other hand, the barrister who has represented the Home Office since the case began a year ago was there in court, except that this time he was representing IBM.
Why?
Because IABS is an IBM contract. It was awarded to them in 2009.
Stacked to the rafters with Nobel prize-winners in most disciplines, nevertheless IBM had no particular expertise in biometrics and no products of their own. They arranged a competition between six biometrics companies and chose Sagem Sécurité (now Morpho) as the best. In the process, they also made good their lack of biometrics expertise – in fact, IBM played a blinder there.
IABS was initially estimated to be worth £265 million and a lot of that money – public money, your money and mine – is being wasted according to David Moss because the biometrics chosen by the Home Office don't work. That's what the case is about.
You know they don't work. You read the BBC's report on the year-long trial of biometrics, ID cards scheme dubbed 'a farce'. You read the Telegraph's report on the smart gates installed at UK airports, Airport face scanners 'cannot tell the difference between Osama bin Laden and Winona Ryder'. You watched Brodie Clark tell the Home Affairs Committee that fingerprint checks are the least reliable identity/security checks made at the border, the ninth and bottom priority for his (now ex-)Border Force officers and the most sensible check to drop when the queues build up and threaten to get out of control.
David Moss lost the case anyway. It was a 2-to-1 majority decision against, a sort of a Minority Report 2 – they may not work at Heathrow or anywhere else in the real world but biometrics are the bee's knees in Hollywood films.
With the explicit permission of the court and the Home Office and the Information Commissioner you can read IBM's evidence in the case, please see attached. IBM's Commercial Director on IABS, Mr Nicholas Swain, explains that all the testing on biometrics was done by IBM and the results belong to IBM and that's why the public aren't allowed to see them despite paying for IABS. We're just meant to suppose that IABS will help to make the border secure and keep the Olympics safe despite all the respectable published evidence to the contrary. You can read Jackie Keane's evidence, too. She agrees with Nick.
It was all IBM's idea according to Ms Keane. OK, the Home Office gave IBM five million pairs of fingerprints to use as test data. And the Home Office specified the acceptance tests that had to be passed. And the Home Office agreed to pay IBM £265 million. But that's all.
It's been a long haul. It goes back 2½ years to a Freedom of Information request submitted on 6 January 2010. And it's not over yet because the other day David Moss submitted an application for permission to appeal. This could go on for years more.
While we're waiting for closure, we have those six questions above to ponder. And this one – what's IABS really about? It's obviously nothing to do with biometrics, as the court effectively acknowledges at paragraph 8 of its decision.
All relevant documents can be discovered at:




Notes to editors

1. As the Treasury Solicitors say (30 April 2012), "the submissions and open evidence lodged with the Tribunal in this case were relied upon and put in evidence at a hearing held in public". We really do all have permission to quote from this material and to comment on it.

2. Without wishing in any way to "lead" you, it is suggested that it will be most fruitful to start with the evidence submitted by the Home Office and IBM. And the evidence of Professor Ross Anderson at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory who points out that the banks have rejected biometrics as being too unreliable and asks why in that case do the Home Office trust them?

3. The background to this case is set out in the first few pages of the appeal document and centres on Whitehall’s competence and its duty to acknowledge the supremacy of Parliament, a subject which you will see there exercises the Home Affairs Committee.

4. Where does this story fit in the newspaper or on the radio/TV current affairs programme? Not on the fashion pages perhaps, but certainly in horoscopes and probably almost anywhere else – UK news, international news (they're all at it, look at India), EU news (the European Commission love biometrics and "eIDs", electronic identities), Westminster/politics, Whitehall/governance, the business pages, law reports/the Constitution, travel, sport (c.f. security at the Olympics generally and specifically UKBA's trip to Istanbul for the world wrestling championships to collect biometrics), the technology pages, cartoons, the crossword, ...




About David Moss
David Moss has worked as an IT consultant since 1981. The past 9 years have been spent campaigning against the Home Office's plans to introduce government ID cards into the UK. It must now be admitted that the Home Office are much better at convincing people that these plans are a bad idea than anyone else, including David Moss.

----------

Updated 21.2.18

It's getting on for six years since the blog post above was published.

Nothing has changed as far as the Home Office are concerned:
  • Despite their record, the Home Office are still in charge of UK border control and they still find it a challenge, to put it politely, please see Border Force not ready for extra checks, claim MPs and Time has run out for May’s Brexit immigration plan.
  • The director of strategy and transformation at the UK Border Force is Mr Christophe Prince according to his LinkedIn entry, the same man who was a deputy director of the UK Border Agency (RIP) for the three years 2006-09.
  • And the UK Border Force still relies on IABS, the Immigration and Asylum Biometrics System, run for the moment by IBM and still relying on Morpho biometrics technology.
In the outside world things have moved on a little:
  • The UK Government Digital Service (GDS) have contracted with Morpho to supply "identity provider" services to GOV.UK Verify (RIP), the failed identity assurance scheme.
  • GDS have stated it as a strategic objective of theirs to incorporate more biometrics into public services on the basis that it's innovative to do so.
  • And Safran have sold Morpho to private equity investors, who have changed its name to Idemia.
Idemia gets about a bit. It always has, whatever it was called at the time.

In 2012 they were found guilty of bribery to win business in Nigeria. The bribery of which they were found guilty took place between 2000 and 2003. They appealed and had the verdict overturned in 2015.

There was a spot of bother in Kenya when the opposition party claimed that Idemia had cost them the August 2017 general election. It was the devil's own job for the Kenyan authorities to have the October re-run conducted the way they wanted, and not Idemia.

There was the earlier problem revealed by Naomi Klein in 2008 when she discovered that face recognition technology being used in Operation Golden Shield had been sold to China by L-1 Identity Solutions, Inc., a company subsequently bought by Idemia. That trade is against the law in the US. It is barred by the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security post-Tiananmen export controls.

Everything seemed to be going profitably enough for Idemia in India, where their products are used for biometric registration under Aadhaar, the identity assurance scheme for 1.2 billion Indians, until ...

... enter Russia. Idemia allegedly bought some Russian software and inserted it into its own products to improve performance but didn't tell anyone.

Now that some disaffected Idemia ex-employees have made this allegation, the Indians are a little non-plussed. Rather as the Americans may be, also: "The company, now named Idemia, has provided fingerprint-recognition software to the Department of Defense and agencies in 28 states and 36 cities or counties across the US — from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to the New York Police Department", not to mention the FBI. Cue fears of cyber-espionage being carried out by software buried deep in the security, military and justice systems.

What goes around comes around. The Indians are also worried about allegations that some other software they use in Aadhaar has CIA tools hidden in it but that's another story.

The question here is, do GDS and the Home Office want anything to do with Idemia? How well-prepared are they? Why take the risk? What's the point? After all, it's not as though the biometrics works.

The Home Office, Heathrow Airport, the security of the UK border and the safety of the Olympics

Here's a copy of a press release that's just been issued. Forgot to mention the French. Zut. They're lapping it up, too, just like the Indians.




PRESS RELEASE

To:

Home Office

OIG (re US-VISIT)

IDABC (re OSCIE)

China (re Golden Shield)

Pakistan (re NADRA)

FBI (re NGI)

UIDAI (re Aadhaar)

Agencies

The Home Office – Misfeasance in public office
23 May 2012
Six questions for editors to ponder:
  • The Home Office have been asked to reassure the public by publishing a justification for spending public money on biometrics technology they've previously proved to be useless. For 2½ years they've refused. Nor did they present any evidence as to the reliability of their chosen biometrics to the court. Why? Is it because they can't? Is it because there is no justification and our money is, indeed, being wasted?
  • The court sees no iniquity in that potential waste of money and describes it as not "in itself or in any way material". If this isn't an iniquity, what is?
  • We are assured by the Home Office and the court that the procurement of IABS didn't break any UK or EU rules. That finding of the court is accepted but so what? The Home Office are still refusing to release the IBM trial report to the public. They go further. The Home Office say the trial was conducted under such specific constraints that reading the report wouldn’t tell the public much. In other words they admit that they have no justification whatever for spending our money on biometrics. The procurement complies with the rules but it could still be iniquitous and the Home Office could still be guilty of misfeasance in public office.
  • Dame Helen Ghosh, Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, told the Home Affairs Committee that "... there are plans ... to reduce the staff of the Border Force by around 900 people ... that is driven as much by technological introductions like e-gates, as well as a risk-based approach. Border Force will be getting smaller". Is it wise to replace human beings with technology that costs more and doesn't work?
  • Rob Whiteman, Chief Executive of what's left of the UK Border Agency, says of IABS in the March 2012 issue of the staff magazine that "the system, delivered by the agency in partnership with Suppliers IBM, Morpho, Fujitsu, Atos Origin and Software AG, is the first multi-modal biometric matching system. It provides greater accuracy in fingerprint matching together with an integrated facial matching element. It delivers a more comprehensive service, underpinning the agency’s objective to secure our border and reduce immigration". It isn't the first. Pakistan's was the first, and much good it's done that unfortunate country. The IABS biometrics provided by Morpho could be more reliable than the previous system but still useless. Just a little less useless. Is Mr Whiteman misleading his staff as to the history and the reliability of UKBA's biometrics?
  • Sir David Normington, Dame Helen's predecessor, caused Lin Homer and Brodie Clark to write to David Moss asserting that smart gates were being installed at UK airports on the basis of a trial at Manchester Airport. When John Vine, the Independent Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, as he then was, reported on his May 2010 inspection of Manchester Airport, he said "we could find no overall plan to evaluate the success or otherwise of the facial recognition gates at Manchester Airport and would urge the Agency to do so [as] soon as possible". This evidence of the Home Office consistently misleading the public, Parliament, ministers, the media and its staff was put before the court. The Home Office made no response. Neither did the court in its decision. The allegation is a serious one. Why doesn't it warrant a response?
At the oral hearing in the matter of David Moss v Information Commissioner and the Home Office held on 24 February 2012, David Moss turned up in court and so did the Information Commissioner's staff and his barrister, but the Home Office didn't.
Why not?
The hearing concerned the Home Office's Immigration and Asylum Biometric System. IABS was due to go live at the border by the end of 2011 under the direction of Ms Jackie Keane, a senior civil servant at the UK Border Agency. She missed that date but bits of IABS went live at the end of February, with the results we all saw in the ensuing weeks, Heathrow at 'breaking' point as Border Force struggles to cope, leaked memos warn, ‘Minister lying over Heathrow queues’ says BA chief, and so on. We may surmise that the Home Office were too busy to attend.
On the other hand, the barrister who has represented the Home Office since the case began a year ago was there in court, except that this time he was representing IBM.
Why?
Because IABS is an IBM contract. It was awarded to them in 2009.
Stacked to the rafters with Nobel prize-winners in most disciplines, nevertheless IBM had no particular expertise in biometrics and no products of their own. They arranged a competition between six biometrics companies and chose Sagem Sécurité (now Morpho) as the best. In the process, they also made good their lack of biometrics expertise – in fact, IBM played a blinder there.
IABS was initially estimated to be worth £265 million and a lot of that money – public money, your money and mine – is being wasted according to David Moss because the biometrics chosen by the Home Office don't work. That's what the case is about.
You know they don't work. You read the BBC's report on the year-long trial of biometrics, ID cards scheme dubbed 'a farce'. You read the Telegraph's report on the smart gates installed at UK airports, Airport face scanners 'cannot tell the difference between Osama bin Laden and Winona Ryder'. You watched Brodie Clark tell the Home Affairs Committee that fingerprint checks are the least reliable identity/security checks made at the border, the ninth and bottom priority for his (now ex-)Border Force officers and the most sensible check to drop when the queues build up and threaten to get out of control.
David Moss lost the case anyway. It was a 2-to-1 majority decision against, a sort of a Minority Report 2 – they may not work at Heathrow or anywhere else in the real world but biometrics are the bee's knees in Hollywood films.
With the explicit permission of the court and the Home Office and the Information Commissioner you can read IBM's evidence in the case, please see attached. IBM's Commercial Director on IABS, Mr Nicholas Swain, explains that all the testing on biometrics was done by IBM and the results belong to IBM and that's why the public aren't allowed to see them despite paying for IABS. We're just meant to suppose that IABS will help to make the border secure and keep the Olympics safe despite all the respectable published evidence to the contrary. You can read Jackie Keane's evidence, too. She agrees with Nick.
It was all IBM's idea according to Ms Keane. OK, the Home Office gave IBM five million pairs of fingerprints to use as test data. And the Home Office specified the acceptance tests that had to be passed. And the Home Office agreed to pay IBM £265 million. But that's all.
It's been a long haul. It goes back 2½ years to a Freedom of Information request submitted on 6 January 2010. And it's not over yet because the other day David Moss submitted an application for permission to appeal. This could go on for years more.
While we're waiting for closure, we have those six questions above to ponder. And this one – what's IABS really about? It's obviously nothing to do with biometrics, as the court effectively acknowledges at paragraph 8 of its decision.
All relevant documents can be discovered at:




Notes to editors

1. As the Treasury Solicitors say (30 April 2012), "the submissions and open evidence lodged with the Tribunal in this case were relied upon and put in evidence at a hearing held in public". We really do all have permission to quote from this material and to comment on it.

2. Without wishing in any way to "lead" you, it is suggested that it will be most fruitful to start with the evidence submitted by the Home Office and IBM. And the evidence of Professor Ross Anderson at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory who points out that the banks have rejected biometrics as being too unreliable and asks why in that case do the Home Office trust them?

3. The background to this case is set out in the first few pages of the appeal document and centres on Whitehall’s competence and its duty to acknowledge the supremacy of Parliament, a subject which you will see there exercises the Home Affairs Committee.

4. Where does this story fit in the newspaper or on the radio/TV current affairs programme? Not on the fashion pages perhaps, but certainly in horoscopes and probably almost anywhere else – UK news, international news (they're all at it, look at India), EU news (the European Commission love biometrics and "eIDs", electronic identities), Westminster/politics, Whitehall/governance, the business pages, law reports/the Constitution, travel, sport (c.f. security at the Olympics generally and specifically UKBA's trip to Istanbul for the world wrestling championships to collect biometrics), the technology pages, cartoons, the crossword, ...




About David Moss
David Moss has worked as an IT consultant since 1981. The past 9 years have been spent campaigning against the Home Office's plans to introduce government ID cards into the UK. It must now be admitted that the Home Office are much better at convincing people that these plans are a bad idea than anyone else, including David Moss.

----------

Updated 21.2.18

It's getting on for six years since the blog post above was published.

Nothing has changed as far as the Home Office are concerned:
  • Despite their record, the Home Office are still in charge of UK border control and they still find it a challenge, to put it politely, please see Border Force not ready for extra checks, claim MPs and Time has run out for May’s Brexit immigration plan.
  • The director of strategy and transformation at the UK Border Force is Mr Christophe Prince according to his LinkedIn entry, the same man who was a deputy director of the UK Border Agency (RIP) for the three years 2006-09.
  • And the UK Border Force still relies on IABS, the Immigration and Asylum Biometrics System, run for the moment by IBM and still relying on Morpho biometrics technology.
In the outside world things have moved on a little:
  • The UK Government Digital Service (GDS) have contracted with Morpho to supply "identity provider" services to GOV.UK Verify (RIP), the failed identity assurance scheme.
  • GDS have stated it as a strategic objective of theirs to incorporate more biometrics into public services on the basis that it's innovative to do so.
  • And Safran have sold Morpho to private equity investors, who have changed its name to Idemia.
Idemia gets about a bit. It always has, whatever it was called at the time.

In 2012 they were found guilty of bribery to win business in Nigeria. The bribery of which they were found guilty took place between 2000 and 2003. They appealed and had the verdict overturned in 2015.

There was a spot of bother in Kenya when the opposition party claimed that Idemia had cost them the August 2017 general election. It was the devil's own job for the Kenyan authorities to have the October re-run conducted the way they wanted, and not Idemia.

There was the earlier problem revealed by Naomi Klein in 2008 when she discovered that face recognition technology being used in Operation Golden Shield had been sold to China by L-1 Identity Solutions, Inc., a company subsequently bought by Idemia. That trade is against the law in the US. It is barred by the US Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security post-Tiananmen export controls.

Everything seemed to be going profitably enough for Idemia in India, where their products are used for biometric registration under Aadhaar, the identity assurance scheme for 1.2 billion Indians, until ...

... enter Russia. Idemia allegedly bought some Russian software and inserted it into its own products to improve performance but didn't tell anyone.

Now that some disaffected Idemia ex-employees have made this allegation, the Indians are a little non-plussed. Rather as the Americans may be, also: "The company, now named Idemia, has provided fingerprint-recognition software to the Department of Defense and agencies in 28 states and 36 cities or counties across the US — from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to the New York Police Department", not to mention the FBI. Cue fears of cyber-espionage being carried out by software buried deep in the security, military and justice systems.

What goes around comes around. The Indians are also worried about allegations that some other software they use in Aadhaar has CIA tools hidden in it but that's another story.

The question here is, do GDS and the Home Office want anything to do with Idemia? How well-prepared are they? Why take the risk? What's the point? After all, it's not as though the biometrics works.

Saturday 19 May 2012

Ministry of Justice soon to be Chakrabartiless

The Times, 19 May 2012:
Whitehall mandarin wins race for bank
A leading Whitehall official has secured the top job at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, making him the first Briton to win the post.

In a diplomatic victory for Britain, Sir Suma Chakrabarti, who serves as the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, will lead the EBRD for the next four years ...
Whitehall – misfeasance in public office
HM Courts Service Trust Statement for the year ended 31 March 2011
HM Courts Service hides “Libra” IT’s new shortcomings
...

Ministry of Justice soon to be Chakrabartiless

The Times, 19 May 2012:
Whitehall mandarin wins race for bank
A leading Whitehall official has secured the top job at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, making him the first Briton to win the post.

In a diplomatic victory for Britain, Sir Suma Chakrabarti, who serves as the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, will lead the EBRD for the next four years ...
Whitehall – misfeasance in public office
HM Courts Service Trust Statement for the year ended 31 March 2011
HM Courts Service hides “Libra” IT’s new shortcomings
...

Thursday 17 May 2012

Cabinet Office soon to be Watless

Cabinet Office press release, London 16 May 2012:
Ian Watmore to leave the Civil Service
Ian Watmore, Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office, is leaving the Civil Service at the end of June, after a seven year career in the Civil Service, six of them as Permanent Secretary in three different roles, and a long career in the private sector.

He is returning to his home in the North West of England to focus on non-executive and spousal roles in charity, sports, academic and church activities ...
Efficiency and reform, Whitehall-style
Less for more
Whitehall – misfeasance in public office
Whitehall – SNAFU
...

Update:
17 May 2012: ‘Aggressive ministers’ blamed after mandarin quits
6 August 2012: Cabinet Office press release – "The new Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office, Richard Heaton, takes up his new role today ..."


Updated 17.4.16

Four years later, Watmore to return?


Updated 20.9.16

Yes, Watmore to return, in 10 days time.

Cabinet Office soon to be Watless

Cabinet Office press release, London 16 May 2012:
Ian Watmore to leave the Civil Service
Ian Watmore, Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office, is leaving the Civil Service at the end of June, after a seven year career in the Civil Service, six of them as Permanent Secretary in three different roles, and a long career in the private sector.

He is returning to his home in the North West of England to focus on non-executive and spousal roles in charity, sports, academic and church activities ...
Efficiency and reform, Whitehall-style
Less for more
Whitehall – misfeasance in public office
Whitehall – SNAFU
...

Update:
17 May 2012: ‘Aggressive ministers’ blamed after mandarin quits
6 August 2012: Cabinet Office press release – "The new Permanent Secretary of the Cabinet Office, Richard Heaton, takes up his new role today ..."


Updated 17.4.16

Four years later, Watmore to return?


Updated 20.9.16

Yes, Watmore to return, in 10 days time.