U.S. Begins Digital Fingerprinting In Airports

lemist writes "Cross Match has rolled out digital fingerprinting at major airports in the United States according to MSNBC. It's designed to increase border security. They appear to be using Cross Match's Verifier 300 LC. Note that the actual capture of the fingerprint requires no interaction with the device. It determines when the image quality is excellent and grabs it."

28 countries exempt

[Brahmastra (685988)]

28 countries are exempt from this testing including a lot of western european countries where the Sept 11th terrorists moved around with impunity. This fingerprinting scheme aint going to fix anything.

Re:28 countries exempt

[1029 (571223)]

What I really like is Brazil's answer to this: they are now stopping and fingerprinting and photographing all US visitors. Tit-for-tat, the way it should be. And it wouldn't at all stop me from visting Brazil, just as it probably won't stop many Brazilians from coming here.

Re:28 countries exempt

[jorlando (145683)]

It's being used here just to pressure the Brazilian Foreign Relationships Dept to act on behalf of Brazilians travelling to US, so they can be included in the list of citizens that don't need previous identification.

That law will probably be overruled in the next few days, since it wasn't issued by the Brazilian Supreme Court (don't ask... regional courts can issue directives that are valid for all country, and that can be overruled in superior courts... you don't want to understand the Brazilian legal system, believe me...)

The federal government is moving against it and also the State of Rio de Janeiro, since it can have an impact in the tourists flow, since the fingerprinting here is being done manually (cardboards were you put your fingerprint)

The relationship with foreign citizens here is based on reciprocity: i.e., the treatment applied is the same that a given country apply to Brazilian citizens. Eg. frenchs, englishes, portugueses don't need visas to come here, since their countries don't ask for visas from us. Americans need visas since they require visas from us.

That's why the only citizens asked for fingerprinting are the americans: is the only country asking that kind of identification from us.

I agree with this, since is the only way to pressure both governments (US and Brazil) to find some alternative.

I also agree that the law was passed hastily, without giving time to the Brazilian federal Police to acquire a more modern equipment (digital fingerprinting is available here) and allocate more personal to do the job, so american tourists are waiting loooooong time to be identified. It is nasty, but is not personal...

Re:28 countries exempt

[John Harrison (223649)]

This is reciprocity for reciprocity's sake and nothing more. Even if a digital fingerprint system was deployed (at huge cost) what would they be comparing the fingerprints against? Who will pay for a big fat AFIS system? Even a small one is expensive.

Which actually raises a good question. What is the US comparing fingerprints against? Do we have terrorist fingerprints on file? I would guess that we don't have too many.

While I love Brazil (lived there for two years) I think this policy of knee-jerk reciprocity is a bit immature. Brazil needs to realize that people visiting the USA from Brazil are far more likely to simply make their visit permanent (illegally) than people visiting Brazil from the USA. Once that situation has changed then we can start talking about lifting visa requirements. Somehow I don't think that Lula is going to make much progress on the matter, but I wish him the best of luck.

Re:28 countries exempt

[notAyank (597271)]

I watched a discussion on News Hour with Jim Lehrer and the points made about this were:

1. The budget for starting this program was between 300 - 400 Million US (i forget the exact figure), but the estimated budget required to make it effective was something like 20 Billion. The question was raised as th where this money was going to come from.

2. There were concerns, as the parent points out, that although the US-VISIT system would be collecting a lot of information on visitors to the US that is currently getting lost, left unprocessed or wildly innacurate, the intelligence databases that the data is being compared to are not up to scratch. Apparently far greater cooperation from the intelligence agencies is required to make this thing work.

3. The system would be good for identifying people who had overstayed their visas or had been deported in the past, but would also penalise people who had overstayed with good reason, for example people who could not leave the country due to illness or some other valid reason. So if you could not take your flight because of an ear infection, you would be in danger of not being allowed back into the country on your next visit.

Re:28 countries exempt

[CrowScape (659629)]

I believe the idea is that next year visas will come with a computer chip containing biometric data, sorta like an RFID tag. If so, that would make scanning the fingerprint registered to the visa increadibly easy. The process then would hopefully be so quick that even re-entries wouldn't be inconvieninced by it. Simply place your thumb on the scanner while passing under an I-Pass like sensor and you're off.

Re:How about....

[Charlotte (16886)]

"Security"? How's that going to help? You just may be able to prevent a single person from being murdered by erecting walls around them (read: the president) but how are you going to protect an entire country?

Don't you see that something else is wrong here? For one, maybe the US shouldn't be training terrorists like Osama Bin laden, the world would already be safer then.

So stop nagging about security, get your head out of your ass, and start thinking about why this trrorism is taking place.. It's just a symptom of a bigger issue and digging trenches or shutting your eyes to reality (and calling it 'security') is not going to help.

What we need is open minds to face the world of tomorrow. Not a reactionary, "we are better than the rest so it's okay for us to kill other people" and then expect that everyone will like you for it.

I won't call you a moron because I don't want to offend real morons.

Re:28 countries exempt

[plj (673710)]

But you should be a citizen of one of those 28 to get excluded, if I've understood correctly. AFAIK, the Sept 11th terrorists weren't, although they'd lived in Europe.

I'm not perfectly sure, however - please correct if I'm wrong.

Re:28 countries exempt

[GuyMannDude (574364)]

But you should be a citizen of one of those 28 to get excluded, if I've understood correctly. AFAIK, the Sept 11th terrorists weren't, although they'd lived in Europe.

You're missing the point. All the terrorists have to do is get a forged passport from one of those countries and they'll slip through. A security net with tons of holes doesn't do any good.

On a related topic, does anyone know what the Pfa (probability of false alarm) for fingerprint matches is? It would be interesting to take this number, multiply it by the number of people coming into the country every day (subtracing out those from the magic 28 countries) and figure out how many jet-lag weary travelers are going to be in for one hell of a rude shock when they get to America.

GMD

Re:28 countries exempt

[The Only Druid (587299)]

Um, you're missing the point: ALL of the exempt countries, by rule, will be required to be machine readable, including identification information required to access the criminal/terrorist databases in the US and in the parent country. This means a forgery would not only have to be visually accurate, but also have to include a false reference including a photo who looks like the person, as well as a clean criminal record.

See, here's the problem

[GuyMannDude (574364)]

OMG, you're right! Well, we might as well do nothing then, rather than take incremental steps to make things that much harder for people to slip through. After all, you wouldn't design a computer network with more than one level of security, why try to protect your borders that way?

If you re-read my post you'll see there are TWO parts to what I was saying. The first is that the system will not catch 100% of terrorists. In fact if some nerd like myself can see a flaw within 5 minutes, I'm sure that the actual effectiveness with be considerably less than 100%.

The second part of my post is prefaced with the words "On a related note" meaning that you are supposed to consider this in conjunction with the first point. The second point is that there WILL be false positives. Some innocents are going to get labeled as terrorists. And that's not too much fun for whoever gets the unlucky draw.

This pervasive "well, it's better than nothing!" mindset that I see so much of these days regarding our counter-terror efforts really spooks me. It sounds as though you're perfectly happy to disregard all those false positives as no big deal or, perhaps, an acceptable cost for some feeling of safety. In designing a system, an engineer will look carefully at the trade off of Pcc (probability of correct classification) versus Pfa (false alarms). Then it comes down to a judgement call, of course. What tradeoff are you willing to live with. The purpose of my original post was to ask if anyone has any feeling for what those numbers are! If we don't, then we're just doing a bunch of bullshit to make ourselves feel good.

And, personally, I won't be feeling too good about sending innocent people to Gitmo.

GMD

Re:28 countries exempt

[twofidyKidd (615722)]

The big issue is not whether its a good idea to protect our borders, its whether or not they are being effectively protected at the possible expense of our civil liberties. Seems to me that if you have a machine which utilizes a database often used by law enforcement, then it's possible that it's only a matter of time before they start using it to stop people that aren't terrorists. You don't even have to be in trouble with the law at the time, you just have to show up on the radar, and suddenly you're being harrased about your Disney World vacation.

Then there's the secondary issue of the machine's level of inaccuracy. If you do any travelling at all via airline, there's a possibility that you might get flagged as a terrorist, and if you're a frequent traveller, then you have an even better chance of flagged. Small price to pay for the security you might say. Well how exactly would you feel if they stopped someone in your family, told them, "We think you're a terrorist, you're coming with us, and we're going to keep you in this room until we think otherwise, your rights, and your lawyer be damned."

You're right, we must do something, because it's better than nothing, but if the terror level is at Orange even with all this security, then it's probably not very good security. Why as a taxpayer am I paying for all this expensive, ineffective security?

Lastly, it still doesn't change the fact that a terrorist could land in Saskatchewan, rent a car to the border, take a stroll into the states, hop on a bus to some metropolitan area, and set off the dirty bomb in the briefcase he was carrying all that time. And when that happens (God forbid that it does), I'm going to be pissed as hell that I'm sitting in a cell at an airport because some $20 million plus in tax money decided that I was the real threat.

Re:28 countries exempt

[Malcontent (40834)]

"Uhm, the security alert being Orange is the system in action, not a failure of a system. When's the last time you saw a terrorist attack on American soil? 9/11/01? Well, then, the system's working as far as anyone can measure."

Yes but you are attributing this effect to the wrong cause. You see on 9/11 I found a weird shaped coin on the street. I then said to myself "as long as I have this coin in my pocket no further terrorist attacks will occur on US soil". As you well know since that time there have been no attacks on US soil so it's working as far as anyone can measure.

Re:28 countries exempt

[LX.onesizebigger (323649)]

Does anyone recall the little fact that none of the September 11 hijackers traveled under a false identity?

Re:Here's why.

[KiwiRed (598427)]

If you want security, you first come up with a secure system.

It looks like many (if not all) of the systems now in place in the US are designed to make it easy for any 'security' to be bypassed, due to poorly designed systems, lack-lustre and uneven implementations, underperforming hardware, and a generally false sense of safety due to the flaws i've just mentioned.

I'd go so far as to say that the US govt is doing more to promote fear in the population than the terrorists do, after which they erode the civil rights of the (undereducated) general population whilst claiming 'We're protecting you'.

Re:Here's why.

[radish (98371)]

As for the 28 countries, I suspect these countries share fingerprint data with the US already

I'm british, therefore a citizen of one of the magic 28 countries. The UK government doesn't feel a need to fingerprint me. They have no biometric records on me to share with anyone. However, the US government has decided that they need a fingerprint from me, regardless of the fact that I hold a valid visa, have passed a number of vetting procedures and have no criminal record. So I got zapped at immigration. Yes I could have refused and been sent back on the next plane (after what I'm sure would have been a really nice interview) but seeing as I live here in NYC that's not a very realistic option. As a resident of the US I don't feel one bit safer knowing these checks are in place - they're utterly meaningless unless you are preparing for a complete 1984 style total awarness police state. Which leads me to believe that is exactly what is being planned. Which in turn leads me to feel a lot less comfortable about being here. So maybe I should have refused...

Re:28 countries exempt

[jaxdahl (227487)]

Actually, those countries already have compatible passports which contain most/all of the information that this system captures anyway, so it isn't that big of a deal.

Re:28 countries exempt

[no soup for you (607826)]

But those 28 countries must begin using digital passports in a couple of months. And if they don't, then they'll be subject to these same rules.

Re:28 countries exempt

[radish (98371)]

Also not true. My (UK) passport is machine readable sure, but there's no extra data on there. No country in europe is planning (in the near future) to reissue all passports with encoded biometric data. Some people are talking about such things, but they're many years away from happening.

Re:28 countries exempt

[donnz (135658)]

including a lot of western european countries where the Sept 11th terrorists moved around with impunity

Well, they also moved around the USA with "impunity". In fact, they used USA based training facilities to learn how to fly planes. They also used internal *not* international flights.

So, finger print and photograph all internal passengers first, please. Put your gun totting marshals on all intenal flights, then if you find all that acceptable extend it to international flights (most European countries already have had way better airport security than the US has for a long time).

If you want my fingerprint to fly...

[mikeophile (647318)]

Don't be mad when I offer the middle one.

Don't be mad

[Chuck Chunder (21021)]

When you get offered five fingers wrapped in a latex glove in return!

I think it's good.

[ActionPlant (721843)]

I don't think this is a problem. I see how some people think this might be an invasion of privacy, and hey, if they put this thing in random public places, especially without letting us know, yes I'd be upset. But this is in AIRPORTS. You're required to check in before you ever get on the plane anyway. I think it's just another means of making sure that people who are on these planes really are who they say they are. That can't be a bad thing.

Damon,

Re:I think it's good.

[gorbachev (512743)]

So...what are you going to say when they extend this program to include US citizens/residents?

It's going to come...

What are you going to say when foreign countries are all going to start doing this to all foreigners entering their countries?

Proletariat of the world, unite to kill hypocricy

DNA is VERY different

[Chuck Chunder (21021)]

A fingerprint is just a fingerprint. It is, essentialy, just a fact with no meaning. The fingerprint itself holds no information about who the fingerprint belongs to, it's just a token.

DNA on the other hand holds a load of information in and of itself.

Re:I think it's good.

[ZPO (465615)]

Like another respondent my fingerprints have already been volutarily given the the USMC, NCIS, SAPD, DIS, and about 5-6 other agencies I have no clear recollection of at the present time.

If you want to get in your personal vehicle, drive across several state lines, pay cash all the way, never stay in a hotel, and not have the capability to endanger anyone else as a part of that travel (other than lousy driving) then please feel free to do so.

If, on the other hand, you want to get on an airplane for a domestic flight be prepared for some screening. Why? Because you are not getting on a public air carrier with a bunch of other people.

By the same token if you're flying internationally then be prepared to furnish your identity on entrance/exit from all countries along the route. Its just the way it is in the real world.

Re:I think it's good.

[LX.onesizebigger (323649)]

The FBI, DIS, OSI and Air Force has my prints. The ATF has it when I applied (and received) my FFL (Federal Firearms License). The sherrif has them from when I filled out (and received) my conceal to carry permit.

Good for you! I personally don't have the need or desire for lethal weapons likely to be used to commit crimes. All I'd like is to visit my American friends and see more of your beautiful country.

I think you are a bit too paranoid bub. I understand if you don't want your prints taken, well fine. Then don't join the military, or get an FFL, or a conceal to carry permit, or come to my country. Its your choice. But quit bitching about it, since it is NOT mandantory. No one is forced to come here.

Says Anonymous Coward. Anyone else see the irony of the situation here? Anyway, I will think long and hard before visiting the US again, even though I am from one of the 28 excluded countries, since customs and immigration seems to be ignoring their instructions at will and just fingerprint the hell out of everybody anyway. I visited relatives in what was at the time held as part of the Soviet Union with less invasion of my privacy back in the 80s. It's really sad to see such a beautiful country fall victim to such totalitarianism.

The reason I am "bitching" about it is that this is a highly unusual procedure conducted on foreign nationals merely for the fact that they are just that, and I hope more countries follow Brazil's excellent example. Perhaps we could also get American travellers to wear something... a little yellow star, say, with the word American printed on it, you know, just in case, just so we know who they are.

Re:Similarities between Dubya and the Fuhrer..??

[The Only Druid (587299)]

This sort of statement fundamentally misunderstands the reasons for World War 2: one of the primary causes of it was the massive sense of resentment and anger on the part of the German people towards the nations that had defeated them so soundly during the first World War. As a result, their crushed economy as well as bruised egos left the people ripe for ideological exploitation like Hitler did. He created scapegoats for existing problems in the person of the Jew, and in doing so gave a strawman to the Germans.

Lineup

[mhlandrydotnet (677863)]

Now, all we need to do is to have terrorists send us in a copy of their finger prints so we can keep em on file.

next up... Verichip

[segment (695309)]

Wired magazine
02:00 AM Oct. 23, 2002 PDT

A surprise decision by the Food and Drug Administration permits the use of implantable ID chips in humans, despite an FDA investigator's recent public reservations about the devices.

The FDA sent chip manufacturer Applied Digital Solutions a letter stating that the agency would not regulate the VeriChip if it was used for "security, financial and personal identification or safety applications," ADS said Tuesday.

But the FDA has not determined whether the controversial chip can be used for medical purposes, including linking to medical databases, the company added...

Supposedly, (supposedly) DoD was looking into this as a replacement for military dogtags, and the BOP (Bureau of Prisons) was supposedly looking into it. Now sounds far fetched but according to the companies press releases: September 29, 2003 - Applied Digital Solutions, Inc. (Nasdaq: ADSX), an advanced technology development company, today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, VeriChip Corporation, has retained the services of Stanley "Stan" L. Reid, a longtime technology industry executive and former congressional aide with extensive experience and wide contacts in Washington, D.C., to market VeriChip(TM) secure identification solutions to federal agencies.

...

Since 1996, Mr. Reid has served as president of Strategic Sciences, a Washington, D.C.-area consulting firm that specializes in marketing advanced technologies to the federal government. Mr. Reid has particular expertise in selling new, introductory technologies to government agencies, including the Departments of Defense (DoD), Energy (DoE) and State, as well as the agencies that have been incorporated into the Department of Homeland Security. (source [adsx.com])

Just think if they decided to do away with Social Security, or made this a standard for newer borns a-la vaccinations... Oh well that's why I'm glad I support the war on terror [politrix.org]

Welcome to America

[psyconaut (228947)]

Please excuse our xenophobic and jingoistic tendancies. Ya'll have a nice day now!

-psy

A quick parody...

[TDScott (260197)]

The Department of Homeland Security put out a PDF leaflet [dhs.gov] about the program, which contained their normal, almost incomprehensible pictograms like those on ready.gov [ready.gov]

I thought they needed some better, and funnier, subtitles [thomasscott.net].

Brazil strikes back! (sort of)

[AndroidCat (229562)]

Brazil treads on US fingers [telegraphindia.com] (I out-sourced it to an Indian site. :^)

Washington has been upset by Brazil's tit-for-tat reaction to the US-VISIT system that went into force yesterday with digital technology after a year of preparation. US travellers have complained of up to nine-hour delays at Rio de Janeiro airport where Brazilian immigration authorities, only told of the order last week, are using inkpads and paper.

Well gee, travellers upset by security measures, imagine that! (Inkpads and paper sound like non-security.) Looks like the Brazilian governement as a whole is undecided about this, "not foreign policy".

Re:Brazil strikes back! (sort of)

[Jungle guy (567570)]

I am Brazilian, and all I can say is that I feel embarrassed by this. The fingerprinting on American airports is an overreaction and a sign of paranoia, but at least there is some justification - less than 3 years ago hundreds of lives were lost in an act of terrorism. The Brazilian fingerprinting of American citizens is simply a payback, and completely childish.

To make mater worse, it was decided by a judge from a small state. The government, and not the courts, should decide on matters of international relations, and so I think this absurd will not go on for a long time. Even so, the Brazilian authorities are working very hard to look stupid, surpassing the American government.

Reminds me of the early days of Dehomag

[luckytroll (68214)]

Dehomag (the German branch of Hollerith - the ancestor of IBM) got its start assisting the Germans with a similar effort - using computing technology (punched cards) to track all kinds of things in the interest of security, efficiency, and thoroughness. They got their start automating the census, and wound up empowering governments with then unheard of levels of efficiency in attaining many of their goals, despite the changing nature of those goals.

Again we are seeing a watershed moment in the efficiency, security and thoroughness of states ability to enforce their policies. Lets hope that this time the population will gain a proportional increase in control over the agenda of the state.

The alternative will be no less than a repetition of history.

I hope they wash their hands.

[binarybum (468664)]

This sounds like a place to rub a little anthrax.. well except for the fact that it would be targeting non-US citizens.
Seriously though, how many people will touch this same couple of cm of space within the same day, one right after another. I hope they have considered a way to keep this surface sterile - perhaps a UV backlight or something. Otherwise this sounds like an international virus hub.

Department of redundancy department

[macdaddy357 (582412)]

Digital fingerprints? That's redundant. Fingers are also called digits.

I just got printed ...

[rjethmal (619327)]

... at Miami International. I just got back from winter break back home in Panama. The actual process is quite simple and none of the people I saw going through it seemed to have any problem with it, pretty much everyone seems to accept it as one more thing the US is doing in its effort to 'protect' itself.

It's almost business as usual at the airport, customs officers just have two new toys: the fingerprint scanner and a webcam. The added hassle is less than 20 seconds. Left index, right index, look at the camera, done.

Do I think it's a Good Thing? Not really, do I mind? Not really, after all, I'm not a terrorist!

Re:I just got printed ...

[Scrameustache (459504)]

do I mind? Not really, after all, I'm not a terrorist!

Neither am I, but you know what else I'm not? A convict.
So long as the states are figerprinting and taking mugshots, I'm not setting foot there. Plenty other countries to visit.

'Digital fingerprints'? Is there another kind?

[The Famous Druid (89404)]

Aren't all fingerprints digital?

joke's on us

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

These "homeland security" measures that Bush and Ridge are saddling us with are a giant conjob. I travel around NYC, and they've reduced the NYPD to a bunch of overtime crossing guards. If I were sick enough to want to sabotage something big enough to get on TV, it would be really easy. The airports are just as porous. Meanwhile, the Sunday before New Year's Eve, somebody buzzed their small plane around the Statue of Liberty ( under a mile from the hole where the World Trade Center stood) for several minutes before the FAA even warned them away from that closed airspace. During a Christmas/New Year week of steady Orange Alert. Any heads roll? Any tightening of the security? Found any "evil doers"? No. This is a scam to keep us scared, obedient, and ignorant of the very real changes the Feds are pulling on us.

If you want to know why, just think about all those military contractors that Bush was going to hook up with "missile defense shield" contracts ($100s of billions - trillions). After the WTC planebombings, they couldn't convince anyone the #1 threat was missiles. So they turned their proposals and whitepapers into "TerrorWar" marketing and "Iraqmire" lobbying. Do you think all that Pentagon biz development just went away? They need that money! And they're getting it. But they don't have actual TerrorWar products, so they're just keeping up the smokescreens and scapegoats while they retool. By the time we catch on and get tired of just rounding up foreign looking people, their systematic abuse of every possible fringe group will probably have produced actual nuts who will follow Osama bin Laden's career highlight. Then the contractors will be able to say "I warned you", and keep business rolling. Unless we start calling them on it, and stop playing along by watching their TerrorTV and taking them seriously.

Not so bad

[Gorimek (61128)]

One problem is that even if you can correctly identify every single person entering the country, you can't stop any terrorists until they have a known terror record.

Still, this should effectively put a stop to anyone attempting their second suicide bombing! And that's no worse than most of these anti terror programs.

Re:What a terrible thing

[Goldberg's Pants (139800)]

If all this nonsense actually DID increase security, then fair play. But it doesn't. From your statement you appear to believe that yet another privacy rape at the airport, in a climate where women have been forced to empty baby bottles because they might contain weapons, is worth it, do you? Would that be correct? It's all in the interests of national security...

Okay, then, over Christmas, the Bush regime (Heil Dubya!) raised the terror alert etc... saying an attack was likely.

Now let's see here, they claim this, which, to me, means ALL these new security measures have been a waste of time, effort and money, and done nothing other than strip American's of more and more of their rights. If there's a "clear and present danger" of an attack, the administration is admitting that all this nonsense at airports is rubbish because it has not stopped the potential for attacks.

In short: All this security at the airport is like the old adage.

"This rock in my hand keeps away all the lions."
"But there are no lions here."
"Exactly."

Let's look at it this way and assume the "threat" is real. The fingerprint system is ONLY as good as the intelligence it's received. If Joe Terrorist goes through and has never been fingerprinted before... Well woop de doo, when he flies a plane into a building, at least we'll know what his fingers looked like before they burnt up in the wreckage.

It's a useless security measure.

Re:What a terrible thing

[Lochin Rabbar (577821)]

Since there hasn't been a repeat of 9/11, it seems like the security precautions are working.

There are no elephants on my lawn, I guess it must be because the pepper I put down every night keeps them away.

Re:What a terrible thing

[Homology (639438)]

what? we shouldent even try to do anything to protect ourselves?

Is this REALLY about protection of US citizens? Then why does the current administration act the way it does, if this is the goal? I sure don't feel more secure, rather the opposite.

From Sorrows of Empire: An Interview [zmag.org] we see that the administration is undermining security :

We are without question in greater danger of terrorist attacks today than we were on September 11 two years ago. Afghanistan has descended into an anarchy comparable to that which prevailed before the rise of the ruthless but religiously motivated Taliban.

And the effects are not one might like :

The United States will feel the blowback from this ill-advised and poorly prepared military adventure for decades. The war in Iraq has already had the unintended consequences of seriously fracturing the Western democratic alliance; eliminating any potentiality for British leadership of the European Union; grievously weakening international law, including the Charter of the United Nations; and destroying the credibility of the president, vice president, secretary of state, and other officials as a result of their lying to the international community and the American people.

yes it's invasive, yes it tacks on an additional 15 seconds, no we don't care if you don't like it

Oh yeah, the administration sendt that message too:

Most important, the unsanctioned military assault on Iraq communicated to the world that the United States was unwilling to seek a modus vivendi with Islamic nations and was therefore an appropriate, even necessary, target for further terrorist attacks.

Re:Clever device

[JanneM (7445)]

Problem is, faking a fingerprint - even when checking for pulse and body heat - is not all that difficult. Bad Guys(tm) will do so if needed. And they will of course preferentially use someone else's print (which again is quite doable to obtain). Then what do you do? Passwords, PIN codes and social security numbers can be changed if you've lost them or is a victim of identity theft. But how do you change your fingerprint?

What problem does it solve?

[nuggz (69912)]

IIRC They were travelling under valid documentation.

Knowing who is on the plane or in the country would not have prevented September 11. They didn't know who was going to hijack a plane.

The scary part is focusing on foreigners isn't going to solve the problems. They end up harassing innocent people, and causing lots of bad will, but doesn't make it safer for anyone.

I can think of a few recent issues that really shocked & upset the US.
9/11
Columbine
Unabomber
Oklahoma city
The Sniper

Hmm, looks like picking on foreigners might not be the most effective way to decrease terrorism.

Facist/Communist

[Valdrax (32670)]

There's only one major difference between Facist dictatorships and Communist dictatorships -- does the government own and control all industry (Communist) or is it controlled by a few private citizens who are close friends with the administration (Facist)? The methods of control and the usurping of democracy work the same no matter what econmics lie behind your totalitarian system whether we arrive there through bloody revolution like the Soviets or warmongering, security obsession like the Nazis.

(Yeah, yeah, f--- Godwin's Law. Remove the racist purges and replace zealous worship with apathetic inaction by the masses and you've got a good model of where we could be going if Bush were honestly an evil man instead of being mostly misguided. Read German history. The parallels are terrifying, and yet reassuring in that we did not step off that chasm that presented itself so many times.)

Re:This is the first step...

[tftp (111690)]

I wonder how long it will be before they want to fingerprint ALL airline passangers

It probably will start as a voluntary, convenience measure - that proverbial carrot. There are enough people who do not care, or do not understand what they are subjected to. Many people today are just consumers of goods and services, and they will gladly take 10% discount on airfares (or something) for using a fingerprint-based identity check.

Once part of the population is hooked, that will be played against the rest of people, placating them as "OBL's helpers" or something else, equally ridiculous and equally effective. A "Red Corridor" can be set up for refusniks, for example, and it will be much slower. The attrition will move the plank from the original 30% to maybe 80%, since people will just submit and continue with their lives.

The rest, 20% or less, will be then forced into the new groove. A mandatory body cavity probing, complete with X-ray, in every airport would be a good start; after some time, cumulative dose of X rays will be deadly anyhow. And to clean things up, a little-known rider will be inserted into an agriculture bill to completely outlaw travel and some other activities unless positively ID'ed with biometrics.

You may say it is too dark a future. I say, if it can be done, it will be done.

Re:Still a big hole in the short term

[tftp (111690)]

Other posters indicate that even citizens of a waiver country will be fingerprinted if they need a visa - and there are many reasons why they may have one (such as to work or study in US.) Some citizens of those countries were already fingerprinted and posted their experiences here.

The waiver skips fingerprinting only if you are visiting briefly, with only sightseeing purpose, or for very limited business activities (like a trade show.)