Archive for January, 2009

Identification et Surveillance des Individus

Published January 28, 2009 Conferences , Member Activities Leave a Comment
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Following on from the workshop on ‘Identification et surveillance des individus: quels enjeux pour nos Démocraties?’ held in Paris a fortnight ago which we flagged below, high definition video interviews with the speakers have been posted (in French) to the web. Here, IdentiNet member Pierre Piazza describes his research on the shift from paperized to biometric modes of identification:

Interviews were also held with Vincent Denis (historian), Sébastien Laurent (historian), Christian Aghroum (divisional commissioner), Laurent Bonelli (conference organiser), Jean-Claude Vitran (League of Human Rights), Sylvia Preuss-Lausinotte (lawyer), Thierry Rousselin (spatial imaging consultant), Anastassia Tsoukala (criminal lawyer), and Jérôme Thorel (‘Big Brother Awards’).

Fingertip Search

Published January 23, 2009 News Stories Leave a Comment
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fingertip1A new technique for recovering fingerprints invented by a British forensic scientist is being implemented in the US. The method was developed by Dr John Bond, the scientific support manager of Northamptonshire Police and an Honorary Fellow of the Forensic Research Centre at the University of Leicester. It uses charged ceramic beads coated with black powder to disclose the unique patterns of salt corrosion left by human fingertips on metallic surfaces, especially shell casings; unlike normal fingerprint residues, these cannot be wiped off, are impervious to heat and do not deteriorate over time. Once revealed, they are baked, photographed and analysed in the standard manner. The technique, which has already been used in connection with half a dozen North American ‘cold cases’, is currently being applied to bullet casings found at the scene of an unsolved shooting which took place in Bristol, Connecticut in 1998. For more information, see BBC News. Picture: stock.xchng

Workshop: Identification et Surveillance des Individus

Published January 15, 2009 Conferences , Member Activities Leave a Comment
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surveillance1This Saturday (17 January 2009), the Paris Pompidou Centre hosts a workshop on ‘Identification et surveillance des individus: quels enjeux pour nos Démocraties?’. A wide range of academics, journalists and consultants (including IdentiNet member Pierre Piazza) will attend to the political, philosophical, social, economic and legal implications of the recent proliferation of identification and surveillance practices in light of terrorist threats, increasing global mobility and the availability of ever more sophisticated technologies. For details and a full programme, download the pdf flyer or visit the workshop webpage. Picture: stock.xchng

Protocols of Identification in the Early Modern Metropolis

Published January 6, 2009 Publications Leave a Comment
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lostlondonsPaul Griffiths’ eagerly anticipated study of petty crime in early modern London – Lost Londons: Change, Crime and Control in the Capital City, 1550-1660 - has recently been published by Cambridge University Press, and is teeming with identification angles. It discloses a metropolis ‘flooded… with false papers’, in particular the counterfeit vagrant travel permits and forged beggars’ licenses around which a booming cottage industry developed. It also discusses the compulsory badging of fishwives, the false identities created by suspects and the use of bodily branding to signal dubious pasts (‘Like paper, bodies had spaces to put data that might come back to haunt a recidivist’), and devotes an innovative concluding chapter to the systematic recording of suspects’ names and offences in the Bridewell courtbooks. These ‘active archives’, carefully alphabeticised and often equipped with additional finding aids such as calendars, tables and indexes, were used by magistrates to piece together criminal biographies, and participated in a larger project of ‘numbering Londoners’ manifested elsewhere in parish registers, tax lists and censuses of vagrants, aliens, alehouse-keepers and street-sellers.

IdentiNet: A New Look for 2009!

Published January 6, 2009 Network Updates Leave a Comment

Welcome to the new IdentiNet website/blog, the online presence of ‘Documenting Individual Identity: Historical and Comparative Perspectives since 1500′, an international network of academics based in the history faculty at the University of Oxford and sponsored by The Leverhulme Trust [UK]. Full details of our collaboration can be found via the pages on the left; check the blog for network news and related academic events, information about new and forthcoming publications as well as short articles by our membership.

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