This is not far from the US experience where they take great pains to fingerprint everyone who comes in on a plane. While 100s if not 1000s are sneaking in through their vast border with South America.

Reminds me of the man who was looking for something under a lamp post. Someone asked what he was looking for. He said, oh I lost my keys. So the person asked, did you lose them here? The man said, no but I am looking here because there is light here.

I would agree with you, of course, except that, as far as I can make out, there is no way to get comeback in the UK about this sort of thing.

Our government seems hellbent on collecting every bit of information that it can, justifying it with reference to the ever-present “war on terror.”