The UK’s Home Office has already started a reciprocal exchange program with Canada and Australia in which fingerprint data of  asylum seekers, foreign criminals, and migrant workers are used to investigate those who are under suspicion by the UK government.  The US and New Zealand are expected to join soon.

“This new agreement will help us identify and remove individuals whose identities were previously unknown but also improve public safety through better detection of lawbreakers and those coming to the UK for no good,” UK Border Agency deputy chief executive Jonathan Sedgwick said in a Home Office statement.

In the first year of the agreement, each country will have access to 3,000 sets of fingerprints with partner countries, a figure that is expected to rise as the scheme progresses.

The project will use encryption and other security tools to protect all shared files, the Home Office said. As a privacy measure, it will ensure that all fingerprints remain anonymous and cannot be linked to an individual unless a match is detected. In addition, there will be no database of collected fingerprints and all prints will be destroyed once a check has been made.

If the fingerprints are destroyed once a print is made, then how do they expect the database to increase?  Oh that’s right.  They aren’t going to destroy them, they’ll just say they did and say, “Oops,” when they get caught later, when it’s too late.