Panicked government’s "security theatre" on immigration to justify ID
14 January 2008
The Home Office announcement of new targets for its immigration
programme today is "security theatre" to give the illusion of control in
a programme that is both futile and delayed, says NO2ID [1].
The Home Office says that visitors to the UK from "three quarters of the
world" will now be fingerprinted [2]. But that is a minority of actual
visitors, those who have to get a visa. No-one entering on EU
documents, including from the newest members Romania and Bulgaria, can
be required to apply for a visa. They will not have their fingerprints
checked. Nor will those coming from South Africa, the US, Mexico or
Japan – for example [3]. The vast majority of overseas visitors (well
over 100 million per year) do so without ever having to apply for a visa.
The plethora of targets being announced obscures that most of them have
previously appeared as ministerial announcements in one form or another. In fact, the statement reveals that the headline "ID cards for
foreigners", that the Prime Minister was promoting last week [4], has
been put back. It will now only just begin in 2008 -- assuming the
Borders and Immigration Agency can keep to this new timetable.
Phil Booth, NO2ID's National Coordinator, said:
"Pure spin. With the PM embarrassingly committed to an unmanageable and
unpopular ID card programme, the Government is panicking and wants you
to panic too. A portmanteau re-announcement is an attempt to produce the
illusion of control, and hide the budget for fingerprinting you and
yours under the more popular heading of 'immigration'.
"The Home Office claims that fingerprints are 'a crucial weapon', but
they can only point to a few thousand possibly dodgy visa applications
[5], to justify spending billions on the scheme. It doesn’t add up --
unless you take into account it is a smoke-screen to work on universal
ID registration.
"This is nothing but security theatre from a neurotic government that
thinks it needs to watch everyone and is trying to make you scared of
tourists."
-ENDS-
Notes for editors
1) NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the
database state. See
http://www.no2id.net/dbstate.php for a list of database state initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing.
2) See, BBC: “Crackdown on immigration unveiled”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7186492.stm
3) The nationalities that do require a visa are listed at:
http://www.ukvisas.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1020786334922
4) See Observer: interview Sunday, 6 January 2008:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2236175,00.html
NO2ID ‘s analysis “Evasive Brown misleads about ID scheme” highlights
the falsehood underlying those statements:
http://www.no2id.net/news/pressRelease/release.php?name=Evasive_Brown
5) The claimed total appears to be reducing. In November 2007, the
Border & Immigration Agency reported that “15,000 people of concern” had
been detected by e-Borders screening:
http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/newsarticles/bordercontrolsboosted
Today’s announcement of 10,000 matches (of which fewer than 500 were
confirmed as “identity swapping”) implies that a proportion of people
fingered – maybe one third or more – may be legitimate visa applicants.
Announcements about the fingerprinting of UK visa applicants have been
trotted out since 2003, when the first trials started in Sri Lanka.
Despite being spun as a success, editors may note that 50,000 visa
applicants’ personal information was left accessible on the web for over
a year – even after the breach was reported to the supplier, VFS Global,
and the British High Commission.
Report in The Tribune, India:
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2007/20070520/world.htm#1 and by the person
who found the breach:
http://sanjibmitra.blogspot.com/2007/05/identity-leakage.html
For more information, or for immediate or future interview, please
contact Phil Booth (National Coordinator,
national.coordinator@no2id.net) on 07974 230 839, Guy Herbert (General
Secretary,
general.secretary@no2id.net) on 07956 544 308, or Michael
Parker (Press Officer,
press.officer@no2id.net) on 07773 376 166.
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