U.S. and allies lay global foundation for biometric border checks

The UK has proposed a transatlantic arrangement for sharing biometric data about travellers as US coalition countries in the "war on terror" push for a global system to control migration. The initiative officially lays the first brick in a concerted effort to establish a common border. Launching the UK's borders and immigration strategy in Washington today, Home Secretary John Reid said the UK and US should "routinely share information about travellers of interest", as well as people caught with fake passports, or those trying to side-step immigration controls. He proposed greater co-operation between coalition countries because, he said, the UK couldn't protect its borders "by operating in a bubble". "Today we are undertaking to improve that co-operation through better exchange of immigration data and working together to tackle the reasons for migration," he said in a statement. The UK Borders and Immigration Agency's Strategy to build stronger international alliances to manage migration, published today, proposes establishing the international legal basis to share biometric immigration data. It said the UK would "rapidly" bring forward plans to use other technologies to pick undesirables out of queues at UK borders. It proposed "voice analysis" as one example. New technologies would be used for the "scientific and technical identification of nationality" and to "fix people's identities".