Britain’s Border Control Systems Keep Falling Over
The computer system used to protect Britain’s borders by screening passengers for terrorists and criminals "has crashed multiple times,” according to Mark Sewall, the most senior official at the Home Office.
Sewall, who is the Home Office’s permanent secretary, relayed that the Semaphore system not only crashed repeatedly – with most outages lasting “minutes” – but that sometimes, it was un-operational for “hours.” He refused to provide a full rundown of the incidents.
“Most outages are minutes, very, very few are hours. I did ask this question earlier, I don’t have the exact data,” Sedwill said.
Sedwill admitted that there was increased “risk” during outages and that in these times the protection of borders was “less comprehensive,” though – so far – no known criminals, extremists, or illegal immigrants managed to enter the UK during these incidents.
“Yes I do, but I don’t have it here and we don’t define these incidents just by the amount of time … I know how many of those that there are, I don’t want to disclose it publicly,” Sedwill replied when asked by Members of Parliament to provide a breakdown of the incidents.
These revelations raise concerns regarding the state of Britain’s border security. While the country’s border agents have, at all times, access to the “warning index” – a list of individuals wanted by the law, the Semaphore system provides a critical additional layer of security by screening all passengers against lists of suspected individuals before they arrive to the UK.
Still, Sedwill tried to assuage concerns, saying. “What I want to reassure you about, however, is that because it’s a multi-layered system no actual threat manifested itself and we have good risk and contingency mitigation measures in place to ensure that there is no single point of failure in our system.”
