Police to Get £40 Million Mobile Fingerprinting Kit

'The Home Office is preparing to spend up to £40m on the roll out of a mobile biometric identification service.
The police are seeking the ability to provide real or near-real time identification of people at the scenes of incidents, through accessing fingerprint and other biometric information held by law and order agencies.
The government is calling for bidders for a framework agreement involving a maximum of 10 suppliers that will run for four years, with a possible two year extension to allow it to synchronise the contract with its Ident1, fingerprint recognition contract.
The project, dubbed “MIDAS,” follows on from the successful implementation of the Project Lantern mobile identification pilot schemes.
Project Lantern was mobile hand-held fingerprinting trial that enabled police officers to check a person’s identity in an operational environment and check them against the Ident1 national database.
The successful trial saw results returned, usually within a few minutes, and provided information to aid identification. The devices speeded up the process of establishing identity, and also allowed officers to make informed decisions by knowing whether an individual was wanted or dangerous.'

Or more than likely an innocent member of the public whose fingerprints are now on a national database and someone who has just had his civil liberties shredded

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