CRB looks to ID cards to solve accuracy woes
One day, their prints may come
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Millions could be asked to provide ID card and fingerprint data to get a job under new systems being developed by the Home Office following a collapse in the accuracy of background checks.
News of the plans emerged in the response to a Register Freedom of Information Act request to the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB). Today campaigners warned it could be used to help impose ID cards through the back door.
Previously, the CRB ran a small trial using passport data "aimed at accelerating and toughening-up background checks on people who want to work with children and vulnerable adults". It carried out research about public reaction to a possible ID card-based process, but has been silent on progress since.
Proposals to use ID cards are being quietly developed alongside official "research" into how to incorporate fingerprint data into employment background checks, which was alluded to in the Criminal Records Bureau's most recent business plan.
"This research is still in the early stages of feasibility and several options are being considered as part of this work, including options for the use of ID card data and fingerprints," a CRB spokeswoman said.
"We really are in the very early stages of looking at the possibility of introducing biometrics into the Disclosure service. It would therefore be inappropriate to comment or speculate on any detail as yet."
She declined to discuss the mechanisms for gathering fingerprint and ID card data, or how they would be used.
In the 12 months to the end of March 2009, identity errors at the CRB more than doubled compared to the previous year. More than half of the 1,570 mistakes were made in just one month.
The CRB declined to offer a specific reason for its disastrously inaccurate month, saying it was reliant on the quality of data provided to it by police and employers. It added that plans to use ID card and biometric data were part of its policy response, however.
Phil Booth, national coordinator of the campaign group NO2ID, said that he was "not surprised by this."
He added: "This is entirely consistent with the various forms of coercion strategy they've been working on to create artificial 'volunteers' for ID cards.
"Biometrics are part of them wanting clean, unique identifiers. It's patently ridiculous given they want people to give their fingerprints in high street shops."
The Home Office has previously said ID cards will help speed up the CRB process, which has been regularly criticised by employers as too slow.
Indeed, the CRB will soon be under more pressure to process checks. It expects a large increase in disclosure requests when the new Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) comes into force from October.
The VBS will mean everyone who has working or voluntary contact with children or "vulnerable people" - estimated at 11.3 million - must be centrally registered. ®
COMMENTS
CRB, ID, already done...
That's one reason I stopped being a Scout leader, the I.D. lot got an 'agreement' with the Scout ass. to use Scouters data to test parts of the system...And yes enhanced CRB is nothing more than a liars charter to fuck up someone elses life, unsubstanciated (sp?) or not it gets added to the database, and if the liar is a plod, real or plastic, with a grudge it adds even more weight to it, though the whining wimin seem to be pretty good at planting hatred too.
And you can bet the card reader will show any embedded CRB data to any official, plod or not, who has cause to read an I.D. card, so they are alerted to any opertunity to accuse and arrest on past history, unproven or not...
@ Mitch Kent
What you're describing appals me.
You ultimately have two options:-
1. Live free or die.
2. Slavery.
If you settle for anything less than option one, you and your parents can be enslaved by an evil government that will somehow threaten you with worse than you're prepared to settle for. That's why the only viable alternative to option one is ultimately option two.
Having said that, Sun Tzu (I believe it was) wisely explained that it's a mistake to try to always avoid losing battles. If you make that mistake, you end up fighting a war according to your enemy's agenda, dancing to your enemy's tune. And your enemy then only has to win just one battle to wreck your strategy. This, I think, is what people are referring to when they say, "You have to lose a battle to win a war." So maybe this is one of those battles you don't have to win.
Perhaps the thing to do is to explain to your parents that if we crumble when faced with this kind of insidious emotional blackmail by the State, then we'll all end up a lot worse off in the long run. Can you, with a clear conscience, become complicit in the destruction of our rights and freedoms?
But suppose you and your parents fight this. If you refuse the CRB check, and your parents and the potential foster children are denied the opportunity of fostering as a result of you, a paid-up member of NO2ID, sticking to your principles, how will the authorities look then? Do they want to risk a public fight like that with NO2ID? If NO2ID members, and their families, are being discriminated against, with children in need of fostering being held as emotional hostages by the State, doesn't that show how evil and anti-democratic this State is becoming?
What I'm thinking of there is the potential to turn this whole thing around. Give the authorities the choice between either dropping plainly unnecessary, irrelevant CRB checks, or face a public fight and public backlash. And make references to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act as well, since what the authorities are doing is interfering with your democratic rights.
Perhaps the way to do it is to write a letter, explaining your position and expressing your outrage, for your parents to then hand on to the relevant authorities when it comes to your refusal to accept a CRB check.
Those are just my thoughts, of course. However you decide to deal with it, I hope it all gets satisfactorily resolved in the end.
Megaphone - because this is something to make a noise about.
Paid up NO2ID member, who they'll successfully sneak in if this goes through.
Grr.
I'm a paid up member of NO2ID, even whilst I'm currently living abroad, and have sworn blind they'll never have my biometrics off me.
Now, as of literally last week, my parents came out of the process and are officially viable Foster carers, for which their current children required CRB checks.
How could I possibly say no to this, and not jeapordise my parents trying to Foster? That's not a rhetorical question, I'm actually asking - cause I couldn't do that to them, not after 16 months of social workers and training and decorating the bedroom and thats not even to think of the kids who would be worse off for it. So, I'm asking. If this comes to task - how do I fight it?
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