Police - Taking Your Fingerprints On The Street

Over in the U.K. they are equipping their police force with mobile devices that can take fingerprints of suspects right on the street. The devices can than identify the suspect as well as providing a photo to confirm the suspects identification. Naturally civil rights groups in the U.K. are claiming this is a violation of civil rights if the police maintain a data base of this information they retrieve from suspects.

In the article it also states that:

To address fears about mass surveillance and random searches, the police insist fingerprints taken by the scanners will not be stored or added to databases.

Liberty, the civil rights group, cautioned that the law required fingerprints taken in such circumstances to be deleted after use. Gareth Crossman, Liberty’s policy director, said: “Saving time with new technology could help police performance but officers must make absolutely certain that they take fingerprints only when they suspect an individual of an offence and can’t establish his identity.”

Interesting that this new aspect to law enforcement is being used in the U.K. and not in the U.S. This seems to be an added resource for police to identify potential criminals, who may try and deceive the police using  false identification.

What do you think? Is this something you would like to see here in the U.S. ?

Comments welcome.

Source.