Children in care should get school photos and passports, Ministers said yesterday, as they launched plans designed to give thousands of vulnerable children in care a happy and healthy childhood. Whether this will mean biometric ID cards be default for this vulnerable group remains to be seen. Biometric IDs for disabled children of those with special educational needs are often highly difficult to generate and use, for numerous complex reasons - ...

The DNA database should probably not be extended and should certainly never become universal, Home Office Minister Tony McNulty has said, writes Matthew George. He also told the Commons Home Affairs Committee, which is inquiring into whether Britain has a surveillance society, that such fears were the "meat of myths". He insisted the regulatory oversight of surveillance - ranging through the DNA database and CCTV cameras to automatic number ...

The growing use of biometrics to identify individuals is "insecure and in need of immediate attention," according to an IT systems company. Fujitsu Siemens said biometrics is increasingly being used in the business world to verify whether individuals really are who they say. By 2013, Fujitsu Siemens predicts biometric identity technology will be so widespread in the private sector that the number of people included would rival that of the proposed ...

Police have intervened across the country to censor 'On the Verge' an independent documentary about a campaign to shut down a Brighton weapons manufacturer. So far establishments in Southampton, Chichester and Bath and Oxford as well as Brighton have come under police pressure to cancel film showings. In Brighton police intervened to prevent a showing at the Duke of York's Cinema. Staff at the Arthouse Community Cafe ...

History says we should worry less about privacy and more about political spying. As the battle over reforms to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act rages in Congress, civil libertarians warn that legislation sought by the White House could enable spying on "ordinary Americans." Others, like Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), counter that only those with an "irrational fear of government" believe that "our country's intelligence analysts are more concerned with random innocent ...

COLUMBIA - South Carolina would make DNA testing available for prisoners who claim they're innocent under a bill heading to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The co-founder of the Innocence Project told senators today that the law could both exonerate wrongly convicted prisoners and help police find the person who committed the crime. Barry Scheck says the Innocence Project has exonerated 214 prisoners through DNA testing since 1992. He says law enforcement used ...

UN chief Boutros Boutros Ghali stressed here Wednesday the significance of the close relationship between democracy and defence of human rights. Ghali was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the 4th Seminar of Arab National Institutions on Human Rights, which kicked off here earlier Tuesday under the title "Human Rights and Development: Role of Arab National Institutions on Human Rights". He hailed such meetings as an opportunity to bolster and ...

JERUSALEM - A civil rights group is challenging Israeli airport security practices. The group says Israel singles out Arabs for closer inspection, and that's racisim. But experts say the practice, which is known as profiling, is vital to security and saves lives. They say attackers aiming at Israeli aircraft are most likely to be Arabs. The Israeli civil rights group challenged the practice before the Israeli Supreme Court on Wednesday. Israeli-Arabs ...

Zimbabwe’s government has described as rubbish accusations that general elections scheduled for March 29 would not be free and fair. This follows a report by US-based Human Rights Watch, which suggests that supporters of incumbent President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF government use violence to intimidate partisans of opposition parties. Mugabe’s government contends that significant changes have been made to ensure that this month’s elections are credible. It adds that the country’s electoral ...

Teachers in independent schools are being denied the most basic employment rights, with some not having written contracts and others forced to work more than 100 hours a week. Growing competition to perform well in league tables, and pressure from parents paying fees as high as £25,000 a year, are forcing head teachers to get rid of staff for the flimsiest of reasons, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) heard ...

BEIJING - Hu Jia, a human rights activist and commentator, was tried in a Beijing court yesterday on charges of inciting subversion against the Chinese government through his writings on the Internet. Hu's lawyer, Li Fangping, said the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate Court would probably hand down its sentence in about a week. Hu, 34, who faces up to five years in prison, pleaded not guilty. Li said he was given only ...

The Pentagon "likely" overwrote or deleted video recordings of a Guantanamo detainee that were subject to a court preservation order, according to a Department of Defense lawyer. In a declaration Monday night in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, associate deputy general counsel James Hourican said that "it is likely" that Yemeni detainee Hani Saleh Rashid Abdullah was monitored by video recorders in the naval base set up to ...

MPs told that calls from senior police officers will not be answered. The government has no plans to extend the DNA database despite the wishes of senior figures within the police force to do so, home office minister Tony McNulty told MPs today. Speaking at a Home Affairs Committee inquiry, Mcnulty said he thought the balance of the number of people on the DNA database is "about right". Calls ...

· Offenders' faces tracked through CCTV images · Scheme part of 'hi-tech revolution on the beat' The police are developing the first national database of mugshots so that they can use face recognition technology to match CCTV images with details of offenders, MPs were told yesterday. The system is being developed in a pilot scheme involving the Lancashire, West Yorkshire and Merseyside police which has generated a database of more than 750,000 ...

New technology is helping Guilford County school leaders keep an eye on your kids. Greensboro, NC -- The district installed the first surveillance cameras more than a decade ago, but an upgrade now gives leaders a look from three angles. "There's really no way to hide from them," Jeff Harris, transportation director for Guilford County Schools said about the new school bus cameras. No matter where you sit on one of ...