London, Jan 22, IRNA ,Britain currently holds the fingerprints of more than 12 percent of the country’s 60 million population, Security Minister Lord West has revealed.
“The number of individuals with fingerprints stored on the national fingerprint database is 7,356,285,” West said in a written parliamentary reply published Tuesday.
But he said that he did not know how many were from convicted criminals or were currently serving a sentence as the database does not store details of convictions.
“Information relating to the conviction status of those on the database could be obtained only at disproportionate cost,” the minister said.
Civil liberties groups have expressed concern about police keep fingerprint records of people who have never been charged with any recordable crime.
Last year, a poll carried out by Liberty found that more than half of Britons believed the country had become a ‘surveillance society” since the advent of the so-called war on terrorism.
The human rights group cataloged the numerous ways in which ordinary Britons have increasingly become “suspects” subject to intense surveillance.
Amongst the findings, the UK was listed as the world leader in CCTV use with approximately 4.2 million cameras and also has the biggest national DNA database with 3.9 m samples.