Noticed recent articles (Guardian) and blog activity about something called the Human Provenance Project, in which the UK Border Agency attempts to "scientifically" determine peoples country of origin so that they can be deported. There's a decent short summary over on the Science Insider blog.This concept is dodgy as anything - the above articles go into it in more depth.
It rings a bell with me: I remember more than two years ago, when I first came across early rumblings of this on tech commentary website The Register and wrote to my MP about it (I've dug out a copy of my letter). A shame it wasn't nipped in the bud way back then, despite hitting Godwin's law in line 2 of The Register's article. Judging by comments coming out of the scientific community, surely this should have been ruled out long ago by some Government science adviser somewhere?
It sounds like they may be backing off a bit now due to the current media outcry. "The present instruction has been withdrawn whilst amendments are made" and they will keep gathering the data but not actually use it in decision making.
Right. Like the various strategic withdrawals on ID cards: they're not scrapping it, so it'll be pretty much business as usual when the fuss has died down a bit.
