Another well-documented case is that of Shirley McKie

Not only does this show that things can go wrong, but how hard it can be to prove your side of the story, and of the dangers of indiscriminate recording of bio-metrics.

For those of you who don't know, a quick re-cap:

Shirley was a police officer. Following a drugs-raid, a finger-print was found at the scene. When checked against the Police database, it was stated that this was categoric evidence that she had been in that location. She was asked why, and naturally denied it. Since they had 'proof' that her denial was a lie, she was sacked.

MUCH later on, she was able to prove that the identification process had gone wrong, and there was actually no match, but it is easy to imagine a situation where a single print actually DID match - fingerprints are not unique: it is extremely unlikely that a full set of prints on two people would match, but it is not that uncommon for two single fingers to match.

Of course, the only reason this was a problem, was that Shirley's prints were on file, so that they could be eliminated from situations where she had genuinely, officially participated. Had she been an ordinary member of the public, she would not have been 'fingered'.

Unless we had all had our fingerprints taken for some sort of 'National Entitlement Card' ...