The United Kingdom, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to tighten their borders by using a single agency and screening system for checks on individuals.

The Home Office has announced that a new UK Border Agency will unite immigration, customs and visa checks, backed by a £1.2bn passenger screening programme.

The electronic security system will screen all passengers before they travel to the UK against immigration, customs, and police watch lists. International air, rail, and sea ports will be covered, with all high risk routes into the UK covered by mid-2009.

I’m sure they’re not going to lose any part of this database either. [dripping sarcasm]

False positives be damned.  Let’s restrict free movement within the EU and refuse passage to people based on the false positives coming out of the United Kingdom.  Pre-entry.  Pre-check.  Pre-approve.  Pre-refuse.  Gee, I thought I was going on vacation, not getting a credit check to buy a house.

The free movement of people into the United Kingdom is dead.  This, again, isn’t preventing terrorism.  The 7/7 terrorists were from the UK, not the EU.

According to the Home Office, trials of the new system led to more than 1,000 criminals being caught and more than 15,000 “people of concern” being checked out by immigration, customs, or the police.

“The high number of arrests linked to Semaphore alerts demonstrates a visible measure of success. In addition, significant contributions have been made in support of investigations and the protection of the vulnerable.”

How many false positives were there?  How many convictions?  How about you give us some actual statistics instead of false impressions of the system working?

Staff with less than three hours’ training are being asked to perform key roles, such as passenger profiling, the union said. At Purfleet in the Thames Gateway, customs staff who have been ordered to carry out vehicle searches previously conducted by immigration officers, have reported checks are down by 50 per cent because of insufficient training.

Oh, brilliant!  Yet another scheme whereby no one is actually trained properly to do the job they have been hired to do.  Why does this crap never surprise me anymore?