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."

Re:28 countries exempt

[plj]

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.

Yep.

[nadavspi]

We got ours taken at the American Embassy in Israel when we were there a few weeks ago (were there to get a new visa stamp).
Anyone 14 or over is required to have their prints taken, and chcked every time they enter the US.
The article is right; it really didn't take that much longer than usual. As long as it doesn't slow the already crappy process to go through at 5 AM after a 12 hour flight, it doesn't really bother me.

Reminds me of the early days of Dehomag

[luckytroll]

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.

Re:28 countries exempt

[LX.onesizebigger]

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

Re:28 countries exempt

[no soup for you]

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.

I just got printed ...

[rjethmal]

... 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:28 countries exempt

[jorlando]

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:What a terrible thing

[corbettw]

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

And no attack happened, though many flights were cancelled and some people were questioned (I'm not sure if anyone was formally arrested anywhere). Since there hasn't been a repeat of 9/11, it seems like the security precautions are working.

As for Americans being stripped of their rights, it's forners who are getting finger printed, not citizens. Besides, this is just an additional access control for people who already need a visa, anyway. And ya know what's usually required to get a visa? To be fingerprinted.

Nothing to see here, move along.

Re:28 countries exempt

[bishop32x]

the NYT article a couple days ago said less than .01 percent error, although as the database size increases the number of bad fingerprints on record will probably increase to, probably not leading to false-positives, just false-negatives.

%error*24million vistitors per year

.0001*240000000=2400

mistakes each year, assuming that the database is 100% correct. note: I have know Idea where these numbers actully came from, probably the manufacturer,not the most unbiased source.

Re:Orwellian...

[Anonymous Coward]

Osama is still to be caught, intelligence has done nothing

Uh, says who? Over 2/3 of the senior Al Qeada leadership has been caught, and multiple terrorist plots have been foiled.

and you dont hear of any new breaks in locating him.

No crap. Do you think that George Tenent is going to have a press conference to say "We have almost located him- he is probably somewhere on Allah Blvd in downtown Islamabad. We're going to look there tomorrow morning."

Or are you completely retarded?

Re:I hope they wash their hands.

[feagle814]

RTFA, man. It's contactless, a camera system that only takes a photo of your fingerprint. No touching involved.

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

[The Only Druid]

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.

Just saw this in Atlanta

[plimsoll]

Four days ago I took LH444 from Frankfurt am Main to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, and I was surprised to see this, uh- system in person.

The fingerprint scanners were pretty snazzy, but the cameras at each officer's desk looked like cheap spherical plastic webcams ziptied to even cheaper-looking lectern microphone holders.

As a US citizen and ostensible taxpayer ;) I'm actually somewhat impressed they considered off-the-shelf consumer products. OTOH, I don't feel any safer, but a more-expensive camera would have no effect on that feeling.

Has anyone else seen these? I'm curious whether these cheap cams are strictly an ATL thing - which would be strange considering it's the biggest airport in the country - or if this is a standard observed at the other ports of entry.

(

Nicht vergessen: photography and use of cellphones by passengers is prohibited in these areas. I got excoriated for just looking at my handy in line.)

Re:What a terrible thing

[Homology]

Are they describing the country that just had constitutional convention? The one that just agreed upon a constitution?

Indeed. Outside of Kabhul and a few other areas, Afghanistan is ruled by brutal war lords. And they are feuding among themselves.

Re:28 countries exempt

[CrowScape]

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....

[CrowScape]

Um, what liberty are Americans sacrificing for this "security"? They don't need visas for traveling within the US.

Re:DNA is VERY different

[tftp]

The fingerprint itself holds no information about who the fingerprint belongs to

Unless the fingerprint is accompanied by your photo, and a complete record of who you are - as it just happens in this case.

Re:28 countries exempt

[the gnat]

It's worse than that. Apparently the administration had already been made aware that two of them were al Qaeda members, roughly two weeks before the attack, and was too fucking stupid to do anything about it. Hence the current stonewalling against the independent commission; Rove is probably sweating bullets thinking about how the Democrats will spin intelligence failures in the campaign.

The response from the right, of course, has been to blame Clinton again.

Re:28 countries exempt

[lyphorm]

He's saying that for every two 747s, there will be one false positive. Assuming that a 747 carries about 500 passengers, that's 1 in 1000 or 0.1%.

In other words, if a full 747 lands, there's a roughly 50-50 chance that there will be a false positive found.

Not 50% of the passengers will come up false positive. 1 person out of 2 planes. That's a 50% chance per plane of finding a single false positive.

Get it?

Re:28 countries exempt

[UberGeeb]

actually, every person on that jet could get a false positive. One person getting a false positive doesn't exempt any of the others from getting one as well. This is basic dice probability statistics, with a 1000-sided die.

Re:28 countries exempt

[radish]

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

[notAyank]

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:....And?

[radish]

Well there's this thing called a "passport". It has your name, and your DOB, and your photo and a bunch of other stuff. And they look at that at the same time they take your prints. So I think maybe yes, maybe they do record the name against it. Whaddya reckon?

Re:28 countries exempt

[yourmom16]

They were issued visas actually, thus they were not illegal immigrants.

Re:Cold War Security (Europe)v. WWIII Security(tod

[kruczkowski]

I agree with you. When I arived in Germany around '89 I was a little kid and remeber checking the car with my mom for bomb before we got into it. That was normal. I still live in Germany, same base. Funny thing now is that the Germans are patrolling the gates to the US bases. Why? Becouse the US military is so undermaned.

I think the reason US is going nuts is becouse the last time US citizens experianced war was during the civil war. Even WWII, Americans that lived in the US didn't see or hear any gunshots.

Anyways, if you want to read something scary, read the artice below. Note the date.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/west_asia/37021 .s tm

Bush was warned

[hughk]

Clinton's people were aware of an immediate ththreat from Al Qaida and they briefed Bush's people when they took over. They didn't have any details about who what and when. Bush disregarded these warnings, perhaps because of other interests. On entry, he had no real idea about foreign policy, except perhaps fionishing off Daddy's dirty little business in Iraq.

Bush should have followed up on the warnings by placing the FBI, State and INS on a higher state of alert (i.e., look carefully at middle eastern visitors and what they are doing). If such a state was in place, the warnings raised earlier in the year may not have been ignored.

Re:Brazil strikes back! (sort of)

[CountBrass]

*IF* you're actually a Brazillian perhaps you should know your own country better before spewing forth.

Brazil has laws, passed by the national government, that Brazil treats foreign visitors the same way their nationals get treated by them. So the US starts fingerprinting Brazilians then the Brazilians start finger printing US visitors.

All the local court did was confirm that this law applied. They didn't "make it up" or anything silly like that.

Re:Here's why.

[Larsing]

The UK government doesn't feel a need to fingerprint me.

David Blunket does...

Re:28 countries exempt

[MKalus]

Uh gee - remember Sept 11th? Illegals flying into the twin towers and the Pentagon and a field in PA? Murdered thousands? Ring a bell? Definitely have a need to watch out for who is coming into the country.

Only problem was that all of these people held legal Visas and were already in the country.

The whole fingerprinting system makes as much sense as preventing people to stand in line to get to the toilet [news.com.au] on an airplane does.

M.