7.1 (Hendon Data Centre)
51.594495, -0.242692
The Police National Computer (PNC) mainframe is located in the Hendon Data Centre. The computer is linked with IDENT1, the national fingerprint database that holds the records of more than 7.1 million people.
As well as using this software to identify people possibly guilty of committing crimes, it is also used by the Home Office to process over 40,000 visa and immigration identities a week. The PNC and IDENT1 allows all police forces of the UK access to these fingerprints as well as millions of palm prints and crime scene marks.
The massive amount of data stored is represented using synthetic fingerprints, created by an artificial intelligence programme. The Anguli Synthetic Fingerprint Generator has been used, allowing for 0.01% of the total number of people with records on the PNC to be represented.
Using artificial intelligence allows for the massive amount of data to be portrayed ethically.The purpose of this project is to highlight the massive amount of data that the government holds on people in the UK. With over 7.1 million fingerprint records, this means that the equivalent of around 10% of the current UK population is accounted for on this computer. This includes people who have been arrested and not charged as well as entirely innocent people.
Although large amounts of innocent peoples’ data has been deleted from the computer, there is still a substantial amount remaining. Once a fingerprint is taken, it remains on the PNC for 100 years before being permanetly deleted. Although the fingerprints themselves are not stored on the PNC, a record of if they have been taken is held. The actual fingerprint images are stored as part of the National DNA Database and the IDENT1 database, both which are linked to the mainframe in Hendon. It is unclear whether these other databases have separate servers or are in the same building.
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satelite image of the Hendon data centre.
Project on display as part of the Emerge Summer Showcase at Newark Works