Yorkshire police plan mobile fingerprint scanners

The force will become one of the first to use scanners provided under a deal agreed in March between the National Policing Improvement Agency and Cogent Systems. A spokesperson told GC News that the devices will be much more lightweight than those provided under the Lantern pilot for mobile fingerprint scanning, and can be attached to BlackBerrys. If a device is lost or stolen it can be automatically locked and password protected within 15 minutes. Once it has been reported missing the IT department can remotely kill the device to prevent abuse or a breach of data. Initially there will be a limited supply of the devices, with one or two each being allocated to different districts. The bulkier Lantern devices have not been effective for foot patrols. When announcing the deal with Cogent, the NPIA said the devices will help police to establish whether someone is on the database within two minutes. They electronically scan a suspect's fingerprint, and send an encrypted wireless transmission to the database for a search.