“Mistakes made by the British Home Office” is key element of our remit, and sometimes it’s just too easy. Take Jacqui Smith. (Please.) As The Guardian reports:

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, apologised for underestimating immigration figures after it was revealed that the increase in foreign nationals working in the UK since 1997 was 1.1 million, 300,000 more than previously stated.

Unfortunately, that still doesn’t agree with the Office of National Statistics, which puts the figure at 1.5 million.

What’s the solution? Leave running the system to the Home Office (and, in the case of the Home Office, we use the word “running” in its loosest sense), and pass the job of keeping all immigration statistics to the Office of National Statistics.

But if the Home Office is going to carry on looking after immigration figures, perhaps we can help them with this video:

The saga of the Assets Recovery Agency seems to me like an episode of The Apprentice.

On the TV show, SirAlan gives the teams a few hundred pounds, sends them out with a task, and expects them to come back with a profit.

But usually one (or even both) of the teams screws up, and comes back with 8p and a half-chewed biscuit, or something.

Sadly, with the Assets Recovery Agency, it was £65m the team was given - and they came back with a rather paltry £23m, meaning they spent about £2.80 for every £1 they took off the criminals.

That £23m would have been impressive if they’d been selling canned goods in a supermarket carpark for a television show - but less impressive given they were supposed, in David Blunkett’s words, to be

“hitting organised criminals where it hurts”.

Best of all, though, it has emerged that about half of the £23m came from just one “client” who handed over some assets after a process of “negotiation” - he got to keep the rest of his potentially ill-gotten gains, apparently.

And that reminded me of the Comic Relief episode of the Apprentice where Cheryl Tweedy just phoned up her fiance (Ashley Cole) and got him to donate £20,000 or something. It seemed a bit like cheating…

1. Did you know there was a minister Responsible for Identity (seriously - that’s what they’re calling her these days).

2. Did you know she’s not just going to be running ID cards, which you’ll register for at 16, but the whole “check in” to “check out” system, as the Home Office is taking over the General Records Office, registrars of birth, deaths and marriage. Essentially they’ll be tracking you from cradle to grave.

The wonderful John Lettice dissects the decision so brilliantly I can only quote:

The uncontentious register that previously existed will, as of next April, be run by an organisation which proposes to make money out of compiling and continually updating the “biographical footprint” of every live individual in the UK.

Don’t forget, they’re going to be merrily selling all that information to government agencies and private companies alike through the planned identity verification service. As John concludes:

If you’re thinking of getting born any time after Q1 2008, you might like to consider doing it somewhere else.

The lifeline offered by Gordon Brown to a few of the interpreters who’ve risked their lives assisting the British forces in Iraq is being dissected across the blogosphere - the marvellous Dan Hardie for starters.

So there’s only one thing for me to add.

David Miliband’s statement assures us that on top of the new procedure:

Alternatively, these staff will be able to apply for exceptional leave to enter the UK

I’m just wondering how given that they abolished “exceptional leave to enter or remain” back in April 2003. The guidance says, and it seems fairly unequivocal to me:

As of today exceptional leave has ceased to exist.

I expect it’s pretty cold comfort for the interpreters that there used to be a category of leave they could have applied for, we just abolished it before we invaded Iraq and asked them for help. Friendly of us, don’t you think?

There isn’t really anything to add to today’s Independent front page:

Hundreds of failed asylum-seekers deported from the United Kingdom have been beaten and racially abused by British escort teams who are paid to take them back to their home countries.

The scale of the alleged abuse has been uncovered in a joint investigation by The Independent and a group co-ordinating the representation and medical care of failed asylum-seekers.

A dossier of 200 cases, collated by doctors, lawyers, immigration centre visitors and campaign groups over the past two years, has unearthed shocking claims of physical and mental mistreatment of some of the most vulnerable people in our asylum system.

A feasibility study of ID cards. As the government’s going ahead with ID cards, it must have been positive, right? (well, assuming logic prevails in government…)

So why has it been 1000 days since a Freedom of Information request was submitted for the so-called “gateway review” of the scheme?

Spyblog and former Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary Mark Oaten both asked for these documents - and our requests, complaints, appeals, yada yada have been handled together.

So far the legal costs have been £60,000 but with a QC on board, expect them to spiral.

And all this to cover up what - surely - must have been a glowing report encouraging the government to plunge ahead into spending the £100,000 a day they’re now pouring into the project.

Or could it be it wasn’t such a positive report?

Hopefully the Information Commissioner will prevail in the ongoing appeals and some day we’ll know…

Britain’s the most watched country in the world, with more CCTV cameras per person than anyone else. That CCTV is hopelessly inadequately regulated - you don’t even have to have any qualifications or background checks to be an operator, and there are few restrictions on who gets access to images and what they can do with them.

So it’s rather alarming, to say the least, to read that 19 out of 20 CCTV systems don’t even comply with the piffling rules there are in place.

Personally, I can’t wait until the ID cards programme gives the government a high-resolution photograph of each and every one of us, facial recognition technology improves so people can be picked out from moving CCTV, and cameras are installed at eye-height in lamp posts to get a clear shot.

Sound like a fantasy?

Tell that to the Information Commissioner, who suggested such systems could be routine by 2016 in his report on the Surveillance Society:

34.3. CCTV is also less noticeable. Smaller cameras are embedded in lampposts at eyelevel and walls, which allow the more efficient operation of the now universal facial
recognition systems. Morphing software which combines images from multiple
cameras to build a 3-dimensional picture is also being pioneered, although
campaigners and lawyers argue it is inaccurate and not a ‘real’ image.

34.4. It is not just the cameras themselves. Almost universal wireless networking
allows the cameras to be freed from bulky boxes and wires. In addition, the cameras
are linked to intelligent street lighting which provides ‘ideal’ lighting conditions for
recognition software, and also movement activated floodlighting and extra cameras
in the case of crowd ‘clumping’ or unusual movement.