UK Borders Bill
1:30 pm
Professor Ross Anderson: Let us suppose thatone of my students—most of our graduate studentsare foreigners these days—tracked out to BurySt. Edmunds to have his fingerprints scanned for his ID card, which is in effect what will happen to my students if this becomes law, and that while he was there, there was a false positive that mistakenly identified him as someone who had acquired a criminal record in the UK or some other country in the past 10 years. The likely outcome for such a person would be quite a lot of hassle, to put it mildly. The Bill contains powers whereby the immigration officer could detain my student for up to three hours.
Students who have been interrogated by immigration officers in the past have commented on their brusqueness, lack of civility and unwillingness to give names, and a general culture that is rather different from that which we expect nowadays from the police. My student might expect to be given the once-over and perhaps held overnight in the cells while further inquiries are made. In the fullness of time, once you start getting a large number of false negatives through the system, the system will learn not to react so aggressively. But in the beginning, at least, I can foresee that a number of individuals might have quite a hard time of it.