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'War on Terror' Allies Form Information Consortium

Posted by Zonk on from the absolutely-nothing-about-this-sounds-james-bondian dept.

Wowsers writes us with a story from The Guardian about FBI interest in connectivity between its own database resources and those abroad. It's spearheading a program labeled 'Server in the Sky', meant to coordinate the police forces of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to better fight international crime/terrorist groups. The group is calling itself the International Information Consortium. "Britain's National Policing Improvement Agency has been the lead body for the FBI project because it is responsible for IDENT1, the UK database holding 7m sets of fingerprints and other biometric details used by police forces to search for matches from scenes of crimes. Many of the prints are either from a person with no criminal record, or have yet to be matched to a named individual. IDENT1 was built by the computer technology arm of the US defence company Northrop Grumman. In future it is expected to hold palm prints, facial images and video sequences."

6 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Server in the Sky? by Broken+Toys · · Score: 4, Funny

    Why not call it Skynet and just accept the inevitable?

  2. they're trusting us with the database? by rucs_hack · · Score: 2, Funny

    Seriously, the UK doesn't exactly have the best record on keeping databases safe.

    Not that I care. I'd be willing to bet that 99.9 percent of the contents of any anti terror database is crap kept in there to make it seem important. Or stuff they think is important, but when it comes down to it is worthless.

    Really, if sending huge armies to stampede across the middle east didn't work, how is a database going to help? Are we going to send sql queries at them or something?

  3. Re:Server in the Sky? by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 3, Funny

    Sure, why NOT call it "Server in the Sky"? After all, it's purpose is To Serve Mankind.

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  4. Re:Sounds more like... by MrMr · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'd say the 'Puritan Coalition' is closer to the mark, or perhaps 'the coalition of countries that don't talk funny'.

  5. nothing to hide? by lysse · · Score: 4, Funny

    Anyone trotting out the "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" line should be forced to use toilets with security cameras installed in the cubicles. (Unless they already are, and it's Stockholm Syndrome speaking.)

  6. Re:Let me tell you a story by an.echte.trilingue · · Score: 3, Funny

    Let me tell you a story, a true one as it happens. Its about how I became a leftie. Very interesting post. However, you never said how you lost your right hand...
    --
    weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.