Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
DR GUS
HOSEIN
28 FEBRUARY 2007
Q20 Lord Jopling: You have talked
about the items 26 and 27. I wonder if you would enlarge on that
and, also, bring in 25, the No-show one, and just enlarge on the
way those work, if you would be kind enough.
Dr Hosein: If I could just clarify, on 25 (this
is a note that I incorrectly raised with the clerk earlier), it
is actually "Go-show" information. Upon research, I
found that Go-show information is about the passengers who have
purchased a ticket at the airport; they are the last-minute fliers.
Q21 Chairman: We thought we had made
a misprint in the questions.
Dr Hosein: I had also noticed that, but field
23 is No-show information as well. So Go-show is specifically
a walk-up passenger; someone who presents themselves without a
ticket or reservation and buys a ticket to travel immediately.
Not all airlines treat this individual as a Go-show. That is an
important note as well. Every airline and every reservation system
treats PNR in a very different way. So some carriers will say:
"This person does not qualify for the Go-show field";
instead they will just say a one-way passenger. So there is disparity
amongst airlines about how this information is dealt with.
Q22 Lord Jopling: Would you like
to expand a bit more and tell us a little more about the OSI and
the SSI and SSR?
Dr Hosein: As much as I can, which is based
on conversations with airline officials. The answers are always
very different because it is almost as if these are free fields;
there is no conformed way of establishing the data in this field;
it is where they put other related information. They may have
different formats for putting what your food preferences are within
the OSI, and special service requests as well—so if you
request a wheelchair, and so on and so forth. Every carrier deals
with this in different ways and has different codes for this type
of data.
Q23 Lord Marlesford: I am looking
at this list of 34, and data element 33 is: "any collected
APIS (Advanced Passenger Information System) information",
and number 27, which is SSI/SSR information. Would you like to
tell us a little about these? As I say, I find the whole of this
list quite bizarre. Some are obvious. How is the list compiled,
perhaps, should be the first question?
Dr Hosein: The first question, the list was
compiled through a process of negotiation where originally, as
I stated earlier, the US Government interpreted its legal mandate,
which was to gain access to PNR, as the right to log into the
reservation databases of airlines and have free access, even for
travellers who are not travelling to the United States. Eventually,
this was curtailed slightly and the US Government said: "Okay,
we're happy with 39 fields of data". That is when the EU
and the US went to battle over how many fields of data. The EU
Privacy Commissioner said there is no reason why they should use
more than 19 fields of data, as the Australians and the Canadians
have already requested only 19 fields of data. The Americans were
adamant on their 39 and then somehow we ended up with 34. It was
a long, tortuous process and I do not know how—is this magic
with the 34 and not 32—but this is the list that we were
left with. The difference between the APIS information that you
are speaking about and the list of fields and, say, the SSI information
is that the SSI information and the OSI information (also called
SSR information) is behavioural data. It does not say anything
about your identity, it says something about you. APIS information
is, generally, the information collected about your nationality
and the information that is on your passport and, possibly, the
manifest data, such as seating, and so on and so forth. That is
identity information. So it is important to recognise that the
whole battle over PNR versus APIS is that PNR is all about your
behaviour, and that is why the US Government wants it; it is not
because they want to identify you, it is because they want to
draw conclusions based on this data. Answering specifically on
field 33, on any collected APIS data, APIS data is nearly 100
per cent of the time collected at the check-in point. That is
when you hand over your passport to the check-in agent, they collect
your personal information and that is when the manifest is created.
It is not usually created before. The data in this field is for
those situations where when you have spoken to your travel agent
or when you bought your ticket online, if you happen to include
this data in that process of purchase then it would reside in
the passenger data record. Even still, that data is not highly
reliable; it is not reliable upon because errors could have been
entered in passport numbers. People are not really accustomed
to handing over their passport number on the telephone or in the
travel agency, and so on and so forth. So the APIS data is almost
always collected at the check-in point, and that is the data that
is considered highly secure and relevant data which is then transferred
onwards.
Q24 Lord Marlesford: A conclusion
one could draw from your reply is that if the alternative to the
PNR system is to go back to visas, the information which the diplomatic
missions will get on visa application forms would be, obviously,
much less than the PNR provides, because it could not have all
this behavioural stuff, which the airline might be able to put
in.
Dr Hosein: That is entirely correct. It is an
astute observation because the PNR would contain, perhaps, religious
information, as we have discussed before, and it would contain
our financial information—who paid for your flight. That
type of information is never requested in a visa process. I could
not agree more. It is within the negotiations that become PNR
or visa waiver, and that is what the next round of negotiations
are going to focus on even more so, which is can the EU somehow
give up more PNR, perhaps, in favour of visa waiver access to
all EU countries. That is when the level of politics goes up a
notch, because this is really about the flow of people and goods
without visa, and that is a highly sensitive issue. I can predict
that the Americans will make a number of promises about consideration
of the visa waiver programme for the EU Member States who are
not already in the programme, but I can say from my reviews of
the way US Congress refers to the visa waiver programme they would
love to shut it down if they could; they do not like the idea
of anybody coming to the United States without having to get a
visa. It is the civil servants in the United States Government
who are adamant about maintaining the visa waiver programme because
they understand it is good for trade, and so on and so forth,
but there are other civil servants who also realise that this
can be used as a negotiation tool.
Q25 Chairman: Are visa application
forms for those nationalities that still require visas being amended
and added to take into account the information that comes under
the PNR?
Dr Hosein: I do not believe that is the case.
There have been a number of changes to the visas over the years
from the US Government, and they have expanded the data collection;
they have gone so far as to include biometrics, as is happening
in the United Kingdom as well. It is important to note that the
visa programme is actually run by the State Department, the equivalent
to the Foreign Office, and while PNR is being accessed by the
Customs and Border Police in the Department of Homeland Security
they have two very different missions and two very different views
of the world. I would be surprised if they were a signatory in
this area.
Q26 Lord Marlesford: In the negotiations
between the EU and the United States on PNR it would not be unreasonable
for the EU to say: "As these are alternatives and as you
would have the right to re-impose visa requirements, if we do
not accept your PNR, equally we could say that we will give you,
through PNR, all the information that you could get on visa applications
but no more. Or indeed if there were to be some more that would
be part of the negotiations".
Dr Hosein: I believe that would be a very useful
strategy. The reluctance would emerge from the airline industry
who have already faced a number of burdens since September 11
2001, but they are reluctant to take on new data collection. So
if the carriers were not responsible for collecting, say, the
biometrics that now go into visas and additional personal information
that go into visas they would be highly reluctant to do so. They
already do not enjoy having to hand over this information to the
United States, especially because they have to pay for these transfers
themselves; they would be even more reluctant to take on new duties.
Q27 Baroness D'Souza: Does your research
show that passengers are, on the whole, aware of the information
that is supplied about them to the US authorities, and the use
to which it is put?
Dr Hosein: We have seen our research of general
holiday travellers, and they are not very aware of the practices.
I have seen research and polling done of travel executives and
they are very aware of the fact that transfers are going on and
they do have a number—
Q28 Baroness D'Souza: "Travel
executives" meaning?
Dr Hosein: Corporate travel. It is research
emerging from the Association of Corporate Travel Executives,
and I always shorten their name the wrong way. It is only recently,
on February 15 of this year, that the Article 29 working party,
which was the committee of the Privacy Commissioners of Europe,
came out with draft language for a short notice that they expect
that the EU airlines will present to passengers in the future,
describing to them what is happening with their data and how it
is being used, to the level of knowledge that they have. The Article
29 working party also released on February 15 a Frequently Asked
Questions. I presume they hope that this will go on the websites
of the carriers so that people who are concerned can get access
to that information. Generally, we have found that the awareness
of the practice and the use of that information is very low. I
would say that this is also true within the US Congress.
Q29 Baroness D'Souza: As a supplementary,
you have already said something about complaints and that there
is no duty to actually report these complaints, but can you say
something more about the complaints received from passengers and
how they are treated?
Dr Hosein: There is no duty to report on the
number of complaints received from foreign passengers. The Department
of Homeland Security, which only recently opened up what is called
a Trips Office—I am afraid I cannot remember what the acronym
stands for, but it is now a front page item on the Department
of Homeland Security website so it is a brand new initiative.
That is the interface for people to complain about the use of
their information and this was again a very recent phenomenon.
The interesting thing about this trips office and the way it deals
with complaints, there are two interesting things that emerge.
First, they say that your complaints data may also be used for
other purposes, so the fact that you complain might be used against
you at some point, and any safeguards against the data emerging
from the complaint is protected by the US Privacy Act 1974 which
again only applies to US persons. We have not seen any reporting
on the number of complaints received from, say, EU citizens and
we have not received any reporting from the various privacy commissioners
across Europe regarding how many complaints they have received
from their citizens as well. Unfortunately, therefore, we cannot
count; it is impossible to know how many complaints there have
been and it is also near impossible to know how many errors have
emerged because again this entire process takes place behind closed
doors, within closed computer systems, to the point where even
the Government of the United States is not aware of what is going
on.
Chairman: That probably negates Baroness
Henig's question, but are you going to ask it nevertheless?
Q30 Baroness Henig: I will ask it
anyway. I was just wondering what remedies were available to EU
citizens who believe their personal data has been misused or the
undertakings have been breached.
Dr Hosein: The advice from the Article 29 Working
Party in their February 15 document is somewhat amusing because
ironically foreigners, although they have no protection in the
United States under privacy law, foreign institutions and foreigners
generally can apply under freedom of information laws in the United
States. Actually the US has one of the strongest, most powerful
and expansive regimes of freedom of information so if you want
to get answers as to how your data has been used you can go through
the freedom of information.
Q31 Earl of Caithness: Is there another
way that one could use PNR, for instance under an electronic travel
authorisation, which would be simpler and easier?
Dr Hosein: Yes, it is possible. This is an idea
that the European Parliament recently emerged with in their declaration
last month. It is a process that has been going on in Australia,
for instance, where instead of having to apply for a visa if you
are travelling to Australia—I have never done this so if
somebody who has travelled to Australia recently can correct me
I would appreciate it—apparently as a British passport-holder
or a Canadian passport-holder, which is what I am, I would fill
out a form on a website that would then be accessible to the immigration
official in Australia where they would get the necessary information.
This is a much more effective process for transferring information.
I have spoken to a number of airline officials who would love
it if this was the process instead of the transfer of passenger
name records because they want to be outside this process, they
do not want to have to do anything in this entire transaction.
They do not want to be immigration checkpoints and carriers definitely
do not want to be liable for information that is sent onwards,
so they have been calling for a number of years for a similar
situation because people can fill out website forms on the US
Government's website just the way they have done on the Australian
Government website. As a privacy expert and advocate I would say
I do not believe it is necessary to transfer this information
to begin with. I believe that what has happened is that there
has been a drive around the existing source of data which is passenger
name records, and that is what the focus of the debate has been
on. It has not been about we need to know more information about
the people travelling to the United States, it is more we want
to tap into this information on people travelling to the United
States. If the Americans limited the information merely to identity
information then it would almost be acceptable, it would be a
mini-visa as you would say for the electronic travel authorisation,
but it is clear that what the Americans are after is behavioural
data, and that is why they have been going after the passenger
name records.
Q32 Earl of Caithness: Could you
just remind us in terms of the PNR agreement between the EU and
America and also the similar one between Canada and America, how
much of that is push and how much of it is pull?
Dr Hosein: The first agreement in 2004 was all
about the Americans went into it asking for pull, and then as
it emerged in the more recent agreement it was mostly about push.
In the Canadian situation, the Canadian access to foreign carriers
airline data is push. Every country apart from the United States
that requires passenger name records it is all about push; generally
countries do not want to log into BA's database to start trawling
around, nor does BA normally want that to happen. The Americans
are the exception because the Americans have the power they have
to refuse airlines to travel.
Q33 Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: Dr Hosein,
we have a copy of your joint letter to Vice-President Frattini
and in paragraph 2 you say "ATS then generates a risk assessment
score for all passengers." Could you amplify how that risk
assessment score is calculated?
Dr Hosein: It is impossible to know; that is
again the problem. ATS has not been openly reviewed by any Government
agency; the Government Accountability Office of the US Government
which is the most powerful investigatory body within the US Government
in all of its reporting on ATS never noticed that it was actually
being used for passenger data, so there has to this date not been
any review of ATS. What we have made use of in order to draw these
conclusions are all the public statements and regulatory statements
made by the Department of Homeland Security on ATS and, as well,
the statements made about the ATS background applied just to cargo
instead of passengers. In their regulatory statements the term
used by the US Government is "risk assessment score".
They have previously also used the term "algorithm"
which hints data mining because you are trying to make sense of
vast amounts of data. From discussions I have had with officials
and experts in this area, my understanding is that based on the
data they have come up with a number score between zero and a
hundred, and based on the number score a flag is then raised and
that flag is then seen by the customs official, immigration official
at the border.
Q34 Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: I wonder,
My Lord Chairman, if I could jump to what is the central question.
You describe yourself as a privacy expert and advocate and everything
you have said has been in relation to protecting the interests
of individuals, but we are living in a very dangerous world. You
spoke about serious crime; there is a lot of that around and there
are people travelling around the world who are involved in serious
crime, organised crime which you spoke about, not to mention of
course terrorism and the multiple threats—not just one threat,
not just potential Islamic threats—of terrorism. Do you
not think that in seeking to protect the privacy of individuals
you are undermining the security of nations and people generally?
Dr Hosein: Every day. Every day I wonder whether
what we are defending is worth defending. Every time I come back
to the passenger name records issue I ask myself why am I focusing
so much on this, what is so important, and then when you get beneath
the veneer, once you get beneath the surface of it you see that
this is mostly just politics. We would call for effective security.
This is in a sense security theatre and every parliamentary process
in the United States, every congressional process that has looked
at data mining has concluded that data mining is not a price worth
paying. They have concluded that data mining is not effective
enough and despite the age of terrorism we are not allowed to
open up the records of all people to run algorithms through them
to identify the few. Every time that there has been a data mining
programme before the US Congress regarding the use of personal
information of American citizens it has been decided that this
cannot go forward. That is why I am amazed that the EU is going
to give the US so much latitude over this automated targeting
system when the American Congress, when they do encounter this
in the coming months, when they do debate the ATS, will—I
know they will—think that this is a step too far. Then there
is the issue of watch lists. Again, we have this image that there
is one list of bad people around the world and it is properly
administered by the UN and will prevent these bad people from
getting on aeroplanes and shopping across borders: one such list
does not exist, there are actually thousands of lists of this
nature and they apply to various levels of crime and various levels
of terrorism and some people who are just merely related to terrorism
and so on and so forth. We are in the process of creating a mass
infrastructure of surveillance presuming that it will actually
work, presuming that the data is actually valuable. Again, I will
go back to the example of the no fly list in the United States:
thousands of people complain that they have been unable to get
an aeroplane, and let us recall that it is not just people with
last names such as mine, it is people with Irish last names who
still cannot get on aeroplanes. There is the classic case of Senator
Edward Kennedy, the brother of the former president, who was prohibited
from getting on an aeroplane or had to be searched multiple times
every time he wanted to get on an aeroplane because of a similar
terrorist on the former IRA list that was sent to the US Government
named Ted Kennedy. Fortunately, Senator Kennedy knew the head
of Homeland Security so he could get the situation rectified,
but not everybody else is in an equal position. Going back to
the original statement, in the war on terrorism everybody understands
that effective security is needed and you need to reconsider some
of your original presumptions about civil liberties. You need
to reconsider them, not necessarily re-evaluate them, and it does
not mean that we should just take as a given everything that is
said about a scheme, everything that is said about a system, as
we can count on with ID cards, as we can count on with communication
surveillance and as we are carrying out data mining, every time
difficult questions are asked the argument offered by the Government
starts to falter and you realise that truly the emperor has very
few clothes.
Q35 Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: You
said theatre but, with respect, you were being a little theatrical
earlier on when you said there were 80 million people who had
been surveyed and they had only caught 2000, and then you said
this is 0.00025 per cent, rather theatrically. If 2000 have been
caught, those are 2000 people who might otherwise have been going
on to commit terrorist acts, serious crime or take part in organised
crime, so we are better off that 2000 people have been caught
then not caught; is that not right?
Dr Hosein: It is not right to almost reverse
the burden of proof where everybody has got to present information
in a way that is not actually safeguarded and then hope to not
be identified wrongly, and there have been wrongful identifications
that have taken place such as for every extraordinary rendition
that has taken place in the United States there have been a number
of errors where the wrong person was sent abroad. Is that too
high a price to pay in the name of the war on terrorism? What
I was saying was 80 million people have travelled to the United
States border and had their biometric data collected. This data
is actually collected for 100 years; this data is not safeguarded,
it is not prevented from being used by other government departments,
in fact it can be used by any state or local or even tribal authority
across the United States. These are not clear and effective safeguards.
If they really want to fight the war on terror, if they want to
truly manage this information, they would introduce proper safeguards.
There are not the proper safeguards in place. The 2000 people—this
type of debate emerges every time we look at the DNA database
in this country; ministers are always very proud of saying we
have caught this rapist and this paedophile and so on and so forth—we
are not given the details of who these 2000 people were; we are
given the details of four of them who happened to be four rapists,
there has not been one case of a terrorist being caught by this
scheme. Yet they are fingerprinting everybody over the age of
18 travelling to the United States and they are moving to ten
fingerprints in the foreseeable future. Is this a case of taking
too large a measure against too small a problem?
Q36 Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: If we
take the United Kingdom, at the moment there are some opposition
politicians who criticise the Government, as you are doing, for
invasion of privacy. The same people are also critical because
the Government cannot say how many illegal immigrants there are
in the United Kingdom. They cannot have it both ways and you cannot
have it both ways and you have criticised and you have put up
very effective criticism of what the Americans are doing, but
what you have not said is what they should be doing alternatively
to deal with what you admit is a real problem.
Dr Hosein: I will start with the second bit
first. We have always called for safeguards, we have not said
you must stop all transfers of all sorts, but we have identified
where sometimes people are not entirely sure what PNR is and how
it is actually used, and perhaps a piece of paper would be sufficient.
We have advocated for strong safeguards and these measures can
go forward. We are not lobbying against the transfer of data to
Australia because the Australians are only asking for 19 fields
of information, they are only keeping it for 48 hours. The Americans
want to keep this information for 40 years so there is a lack
of proportion that is going on and that is what we go after. You
raised the issue of illegal immigration. The American Government
is spending close to $15 billion on the US-VISIT system and there
was just news this week and a Government Accountability Office
report last month that said that the system was highly complex
and unlikely to ever work, and they have noticed that they cannot
actually check the biometrics of people leaving the United States
so while they can check people coming in, there is no ability
to monitor the exit process so how do you get around the illegal
immigration problem at that point when you may have let the people
in the country and you cannot manage to get them out. I am not
going around saying all surveillance is bad, I am not going around
saying the US Government is awful or the choices made by this
Government are awful, I am trying to penetrate below the politics
and show where there are serious problems and serious concerns
and we need to debate these serious problems and serious concerns
and not reside at this top level of fear.
Chairman: Can we have some quick questions
relating to this from Lord Harrison, then Lord Jopling and then
Lord Listowel?
Q37 Lord Harrison: Like Lord Foulkes
I too hesitated when you gave the figures which were 80 million,
of which there were a quarter of a million who were identified
of which 2000 were then convicted or caught of whatever. Actually,
a quarter of a million is many fewer people than 80 million so
if it is in the right ballpark I would have thought it was of
advantage to the security services. Granting what you say about
the diciness of some of the data and the grounds upon which it
is put, it would still be interesting, would it not, to look at
that 2000 against another representative sample of quarter of
a million? In other words, that may then in turn give you some
indication of whether indeed the sift through the 80 million fingerprints
was putting you in the ballpark of those who should fall under
suspicion.
Dr Hosein: The quarter of a million I was referring
to was through data mining of private sector data and government
data after 9/11 to identify terrorists based on a profile. The
US-VISIT system does not work on a profiling basis, it works on
collecting the personal information of this individual and the
biometrics of this individual, does this match any databases of
concern, and then a flag will go up and say this person is a wanted
rapist so stop this person, or this person has previously been
convicted, send this person back home. I would be careful not
to confuse the 80 million, the quarter of a million and the 2000.
When the US-VISIT system came in the US Government said do not
worry about this, we are only taking two fingerprints, we are
not treating you like criminals. We warned the US Government at
that time that two fingerprints were ineffective and if you were
really going to take the fingerprints of individuals you had to
take all ten fingerprints, and the US Government said no, no,
there is no such worry. What is happening in June this year? They
are moving to ten fingerprints. The other concern is if you really
want to verify people against the list of fingerprints held in
the FBI database—and we warned the US Government of this—the
fingerprints taken at the border are just simple fingerprints
and not the sophisticated type of fingerprints you need to take
at police stations in order to verify criminals against the fingerprint
database. The US Government said that is just proof we are not
actually treating people like criminals, we are just taking simple
biometrics to verify people against their visas and the next time
they return and so on and so forth. Now the US Government is saying
the new fingerprints are going to be taken in a format that will
be interchangeable with the FBI database of fingerprints. My point
behind all of this is that at first the system was introduced
as a nice people management system and now we are finally understanding
that it is actually a criminal management system, treating all
foreigners as if they were criminals. It would almost be acceptable—and
I would never advocate this—if this practice was applied
to American citizens, but it is not being applied to American
citizens because that is considered unpalatable. Why is it palatable
to apply it to foreigners? It is because we do not care about
foreigners, it is because—and this happens in the politics
of every country—you do not worry about the other; meanwhile
the other, these foreigners coming in, they are at their least
powerful status in the entire world as they are when they are
right outside of a border. That is when we know that we can treat
them the way we have been treating them, we know we can take any
information we want from them because they do not have the right
to say no. This might be the state of affairs that everybody is
happy with, that is absolutely fine and I am willing to settle
with that, but let us also admit that we are taking advantage
of the situation, we are treating people like criminals for no
reason or for a reason we would not treat our own citizens as
criminals.
Lord Harrison: I will leave it there,
it is an important point.
Q38 Lord Jopling: Leaving aside how
you take fingerprints, I would like to allow you to put on the
record your basic approach to all this. Do you regard the taking
of fingerprints in a mass way like this as an invasion of privacy
and, if you do, would you accept that the huge majority of us
are perfectly happy to have our fingerprints taken and kept on
the record for as long as anybody wants?
Dr Hosein: First, do I consider it invasive?
Yes, absolutely. Maybe this is a generational thing, but I come
from a generation where you were fingerprinted if you are a criminal.
In today's modern society you might be fingerprinted in other
ways such as gaining access to a building, but that is a very
proportionate fingerprinting scheme that is actually effective.
It raises a larger question, is it effective to add more fingerprints
to a database to try to identify people? We watch too much crime
drama on television and we presume that a fingerprint match is
a simple process; in fact it is a very sophisticated process and
when you actually run a fingerprint match against a database,
what is being given back to you are the nearest results, but that
is acceptable when the nearest results are people who are criminals
because that is why their fingerprints are on the database. When
the nearest results are innocent people who have never been a
criminal, but their fingerprints are part of that database, problems
emerge. Let me give you the example of Brandon Mayfield. Brandon
Mayfield is a Portland, Oregon-based lawyer who converted to Islam
a few years ago. His fingerprints were on the US Government databases
because he served in the first war in Iraq, he served within the
Army. After the Madrid bombings, one of the bags had not exploded
and the Spanish police were able to lift a fingerprint of the
bag; the Spanish police looked through their database of criminals
and terrorists and could not identify the fingerprint, so they
made the call out to all other police agencies around the world,
does this fingerprint match yours. Both the US Government and
the Algerian Government stood up and said, yes, actually we have
a match, and the Americans took Brandon Mayfield, as I said, a
lawyer, put him in the jail for two weeks without access to a
lawyer and told the Spaniards we are willing to send this guy
to Spain to face trial. Brandon Mayfield did not have a passport,
he had not left the United States for a number of years, and there
was a massive investigation afterwards because three FBI experts
on fingerprints confirmed that it was his fingerprint, even though
it was later discovered that it was not his fingerprint, and so
he was kept in jail illegally, he has now sued the US Government
and they recently came to a settlement, I believe somewhere in
the millions of dollars. There was an investigation in the US
Government that asked was this done because Brandon Mayfield converted
to Islam and was actually a lawyer defending terrorists in Oregon,
or was this merely because of a biometric check against a database?
It is never as simple as we imagine it is, it is never as simple
as 100 per cent match of one fingerprint against a massive database,
it is far more complex. So the argument that we present is that
fingerprinting is not by its nature problematic, it is when you
start increasing the pool of data for fingerprints that things
start. Fingerprinting becomes more and more unreliable and that
is why I go back to the original example, fingerprinting to get
into a building is not problematic because it is just one fingerprint
against a very small database and the error rate tends to be relatively
small. When you talk about 80 million people, such as under the
VISIT programme, or 60 million people as it would be under the
fingerprinting programme in this country—which will be applied
to citizens—that is when the errors actually emerge. Finally,
on the issue of do I accept that the majority accepts it as reasonable,
I do not accept that. I do not accept that the majority would
necessarily find fingerprinting acceptable and I would note that
support for the ID programme, for instance, particularly in the
biometrics component, is as low as 50 per cent.
Q39 Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: You
are quoting the LSE study, are you not?
Dr Hosein: No, I am not. The LSE has done no
polling on this, I am quoting ICM and YouGov polls that originally
showed—and this is the case with all the policies I have
dealt with over the years. When a policy emerges at first, particularly
when it is to do with the war on terrorism, support is 80 per
cent because who would not support a measure against terrorists?
The more people learn about these policies, the more they understand
about these policies, the support for them actually goes down.
Meanwhile, the United States support for US-VISIT is very high;
there are very few people who would oppose fingerprinting Mexicans
and Canadians who, ironically, are not fingerprinted on the US
VISIT programme, but if it is Germans, British and French nationals
they have no problems about it, but the Americans would not accept
being fingerprinted by their own Government.
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