Illegal immigration

[darmstadt]

What is the problem with ID cards? Germany has had them for years and if British people are so annoyed about illegal immigrants then they would welcome them. Over here, you have to carry ID with you all the time and when stopped you have to produce it. If you don't have an ID on you then the police will either call someone to ascertain you are who you are and then follow up with a home visit although in most cases they will drive you to where you (say you) live and get you to produce ID. If you don't have valid ID then you're arrested and kicked out of the country, said and done.

[expat]

...Iris scans likewise have a phenomenal potential for uniqueness, but in practise the error rates were so bad in one recent study that they were abandoned altogether. I gather places like Schipol airport use iris scans, but I imagine their error rates are undisclosed and they are used for authentication rather than identification, and on smaller databases.

Schiphol uses a card that you carry to identify yourself, and authenticates you. Frankfurt reads your passport first. Heathrow etc just scan, probably why they take longer. I note that the UK IRIS scan has been out of operation for the last few weeks, though I heard a rumour that it was a shrotage of staff (or inclination) in the company running it.

[daviejones]

Was it Noel Edmonds recently that said "you can only get so many people in a lift"?

About time we started to empty this lift a little...IMHO

[TimberWolf]

If the database holds fingerprint, iris scan and dna along with a photo then the chances of a false positive are pretty slim.

And what do you think happens to the false reject rate of a biometric on its own when used in conjunction multiple biometrics? What probability do you associate with 'pretty slim'?

A search for a criminal may throw up more than one possible on any one of those search criteria, but is unlikely to throw up only one and that one be wrong. Good old fashioned police work should do the rest.

You have no sense of the scale of the numbers involved.

[TimberWolf]

What is the problem with ID cards? Germany has had them for years and if British people are so annoyed about illegal immigrants then they would welcome them. Over here, you have to carry ID with you all the time and when stopped you have to produce it. If you don't have an ID on you then the police will either call someone to ascertain you are who you are and then follow up with a home visit although in most cases they will drive you to where you (say you) live and get you to produce ID. If you don't have valid ID then you're arrested and kicked out of the country, said and done.

My interest is mainly with the lies and deceit involved and the profligate use of public money on things that are too complex for politicians to understand. I don't really care about privacy issues, but some on here are. I'm more interested in the truth. The government and agencies employed to carry out the work apparently more in secrecy - and secrecy in their methods is no protection in security. Population size is another huge problem waiting to happen IMO, especially in the UK. I doubt Germany would welcome the UKs illegal immigrants.

[The Lone Gunman]

And what do you think happens to the false reject rate of a biometric on its own when used in conjunction multiple biometrics? What probability do you associate with 'pretty slim'?



You have no sense of the scale of the numbers involved.

I think you are overstating the issues.

Pretty slim would be none for ID ing someone standing in front of you.
If the bloke being identified looks like the database picture then it is probably him. If his prints, DNA and iris match then it is him. If one or two do not match then there is a system issue. If none of it matches then the bloke is not who he claims to be.

For the police search:
Do you think the police will be checking every record for a print match or do you think they may look for a match on the known crims list first?
It would be rare to ONLY have a print and for that print to belong to a new offender. There is usualy a description of some sort.

I am against a national database of prints, dna and iris scans but do not see the problems you propose.

[Diver]

I think we should have an annual cull. Make it a national holiday, everybody can join in, and we can have a week of Illegal immigrant lynchings, street parties, fireworks and bonfires

[TimberWolf]

I think you are overstating the issues.

Pretty slim would be none for ID ing someone standing in front of you.
If the bloke being identified looks like the database picture then it is probably him. If his prints, DNA and iris match then it is him. If one or two do not match then there is a system issue. If none of it matches then the bloke is not who he claims to be.

What happens if one or two of these biometrics do not match? This will happen a lot. It will involve a lot of manual work - except in practise what will happen is that tolerance for errors will be further reduced.

For the police search:
Do you think the police will be checking every record for a print match or do you think they may look for a match on the known crims list first?

They use something called 'binning' to reduce the size of the databases needed to be searched. Bins could be geographic location or known criminals for example. It has the disadvantage that you can bin incorrectly.

It would be rare to ONLY have a print and for that print to belong to a new offender. There is usualy a description of some sort.

This presupposes that the police will be doing a lot of manual work to match things (and in a lot of situations ID checks may not involve police). ID cards will be boom times with the false rejects are likely to occur. In practise of course they will just let people slip past.

[TimberWolf]

I think we should have an annual cull. Make it a national holiday, everybody can join in, and we can have a week of Illegal immigrant lynchings, street parties, fireworks and bonfires

I've a cheaper solution - use a fraction of the money we would have spent on ID cards to offer as an inducement to recent immigrants to return to their homelands.

[Diver]

I've a cheaper solution - use a fraction of the money we would have spent on ID cards to offer as an inducement to recent immigrants to return to their homelands.

So that they could fund their return to Britain in style?