UK Halts Anti-Pedophile Database

Britain has halted work on a massive pedophile database just weeks before it was to be introduced. Government ministers say the vetting program—which would have required gathering information on 9 million people—will be scaled down and redesigned along "common sense" lines, the Telegraph reports.

The program would have required anybody working with children—including guest speakers at schools and parents who signed up for school driving rotas—to pay a $100 fee to be registered on the database. The plan, introduced by the Labour government that lost power last month, was too "draconian," the Home secretary says. "You were assumed to be guilty until you were proven innocent, and told you were able to work with children." (More database stories.)