The policy instruction to UKBA staff on the sinister sounding Human Provenance Project (who cooked this name up, for heaven’s sake?) has changed yet again. The link on my last post on this still works, but the document it links to has changed and now reads as follows:

Alterations have been made to the nationality swapping – Isotope analysis and DNA testing process. This process continues to operate.

The present instruction has been withdrawn whilst amendments are made.

Thanks to my normal source of geek rather than immigration news, The Register (‘Biting the hand that feeds IT’), I see that the journal Nature has published an editorial condemning the project. It looks like the project may resurface, though, perhaps with a re-worded section on the use to which test results may be put by UKBA. I very much doubt that playing with the wording will somehow render the unacceptable acceptable.