§ Mr. ThurnhamTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he is taking to make greater use of computer technology to aid the detection of forged immigration documents. [32207]
§ Mr. Nicholas BakerComputerisation of the warnings index for arriving passengers has permitted machine readable passports to be checked against lists of stolen documents by swiping them through a reader. All ports of entry are supplied with forgery detection equipment, but the principal methods of detection still rely on light sources—ultra violet and infra red—and microscopes rather than computer technology.
The Immigration Service uses computer technology in a variety of ways in the development of sophisticated document examination techniques. In co-operation with five other countries, the United Kingdom is involved in the introduction of an image retrieval system providing a comprehensive database of the world's travel documents on optical disk. The service also uses photophone technology to transmit high-definition, stored images of travel documents along telephone lines.