UK Police Implement Roadside Fingerprinting Tools

mormop writes to tell us the BBC is reporting that police in the UK have implemented a pilot program that allows officers to fingerprint drivers using a small handheld scanner connected to a database of approximately 6.5 million prints. From the article: "Officers promise prints will not be kept on file but concerns have been raised about civil liberties. [...] It is primarily aimed at motorists because banned or uninsured drivers often give false names, although pedestrians could also be asked to give prints if they are suspected to have committed an offence."

Comments

Re:What about a driver's license?

[Qzukk]

in the police database. Then this could be cross referenced against the auto registration.

You'd think you could do this, but thanks to decades (centuries? millennia?) of government balkanization, not only can the police database not talk to the auto registration database, but the auto registration department is full of incompetent pansies who sit on their ass all day and suck budget money that would have better gone to be police database, so even if they could talk to each other, why would the police database WANT to talk to their useless pile of junk?