Police are analysing people’s surnames to conduct secret ethnic profiling, The Times has been told.
Racial equality campaigners said they were “very saddened” that organisations would now target black and Asian households without their consent and feared that the technology would become a tool for racists.
Already several police forces have used the ethnic-profiling system, which uses a person’s name to work out which country his or her ancestors are likely to have come from.
NHS trusts have also used the system, called Mosaic Origins, as have groups such as Amnesty International. It has attracted interest from Labour and the Conservatives, banks, supermarkets and other commercial organisations, which could soon have access to it.
“I’m really very saddened that forces can’t see the inherent dangers of police having this information,” Keith Jarrett, the president of the National Black Police Association, said.
“While yes, it may be useful to know after an incident how many Sikhs lived on that street,” Mr Jarrett said, “what’s to say some disgruntled copper won’t sell it to the BNP?”
The Commission for Racial Equality said: “Using technology to identify areas where ethnic minorities live might be discriminatory and its effectiveness is debatable.”
The system works by determining where a person’s ancestors are most likely to have come from on the basis of their first and last name. It is the brainchild of Richard Webber, the inventor of one of the largest consumer-profiling systems in the world.
He said that police forces found it a valuable tool to help ethnic minorities, for example by responding more effectively and sensitively to crimes in their communities.
“Currently very little is known about the behaviour of ethnic groups, because we don’t like asking them where they come from,” Professor Webber said.
The system could be used, for example, by GPs wanting to identify Asian men at higher risk of diabetes. But he said that it could also be used by banks to identify Asians who might need small business advice or by organisations wanting to prove their diversity to secure Lottery funding.
However, Experian, the company that markets Mosaic Origins, said that at this stage it was mostly used by the public sector, and “we have very strict protocols in place” to prevent it from being used to discriminate against people.
Surrey Police said that they had used the software in organising a leaflet campaign against race crime.
1 response so far ↓
Paul W // April 21, 2007 at 1:11 pm
To say the effectiveness of any attempt to gain an understanding of an individual’s ethnic origin through surname analysis alone is debatable must surely register as one of the great understatements of all time! Why? The clue is in ‘enslavement’.