Wanted - for crimes of identity theft

NO2ID Birmingham followed up the national organisers' fingerprints campaign today by calling on Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Home Secretary and Redditch MP Jacqui Smith to prove their faith in the National Identity Register by adding their own name and prints with the following press statement.

Press release
IMMEDIATE
9 April 2008

ID CARD REBELS OFFER £1,000 FOR REDDITCH MP’s FINGERPRINTS

Civil liberties groups NO2ID and Privacy International are joining forces to offer £1,000 to anyone who can get hold of the Prime Minister’s or Home Secretary’s fingerprints in a campaign designed to highlight the dangers of the universal collection of fingerprints in central Government databases.

NO2ID and Privacy International have issued Wild West-style ‘Wanted’ posters accusing Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith of ‘identity theft’ and endangering personal security. The poster states that ‘the fingerprint must be obtained lawfully.’ The £1,000 reward will be paid to the charity of the ‘bounty hunter’s choice’.

Michelle Graham, NO2ID’s Birmingham Co-ordinator, said: “Fingerprints can be reproduced from prints left on beer glasses, doorknobs or anything with a hard surface. When Jacqui Smith says that linking us by our fingerprints to the national database is a security measure, what she’s actually doing is opening the door for fraudsters and criminals to have one central point of access to our identities. If the Identity Register is such a great thing, why is the Government targeting foreign nationals and students instead of signing up MPs themselves?”

The move could leave both groups open to prosecution for incitement. Speaking in The Observer on 6 April, Simon Davies, director of Privacy International said: “I'm sure the Government will seek legal advice to see if we can be prosecuted. But it would be a foolish government that would try to charge civil rights groups.”

ENDS

Notes for editors:
1. For further information please contact Michelle Graham on 07734 087470 or email birmingham@no2id.net.
2. A pdf of the poster is attached. For a PNG or jpeg, visit: www.privacyinternational.org/article.shtml?cmd[347]=x-347-561230
3. German hackers recently obtained the fingerprint of the German Interior Minister and printed 4,000 copies of it. The fingerprint came from a glass the Minister drank from while speaking at a University in Berlin. The image was printed on a plastic foil that can be fixed to a person’s finger and used to replicate an individual's prints on doors, telephones or biometric readers. For more information see: www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/30/german_interior_minister_fingerprint_appropriated
4. NO2ID is the UK-wide non-partisan campaign against ID cards and the database state. Scroll down www.no2id.net for a list of 'database state' initiatives that NO2ID is actively opposing.