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1//The Independent, UK 03 December 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=589256 FINGERPRINT SYSTEM CRASH FUELS DOUBTS OVER ID CARD SCHEME
By Nigel Morris, Home Affairs Correspondent
Investigations into thousands of crimes have been hampered by a serious crash in the police computer system for checking fingerprints.
All 43 forces in England and Wales were affected by the shutdown, which meant officers could not check the fingerprints of suspects.
The collapse of the national automated fingerprint identification system (Nafis) is the latest embarrassing computer failure to affect a public body and will raise fresh questions over the Government's plans for a national identity card system, which will include "biometric" details such as fingerprints.
Nafis, which cost £96m six years ago and holds more than four million records, suddenly went offline on 24 November. The system, run by Northrop Grumman, an American computer giant, shut down completely until Monday. Yesterday one force, not identified by the Home Office, was still offline.
(SKIP)
David Davis, the shadow Home Secretary, said: "This is yet another in a long line of government IT disasters. It is outrageous, given the importance of this sort of problem to the debate on ID cards, that the Government kept it secret."
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