British Airport Will Require Fingerprints From Domestic Passengers

ProfBooty brings us a story about England's Heathrow airport, which will begin fingerprinting passengers on its domestic flights later this month. Airport executives claim that the data will be stored for no longer than 24 hours, and will not be shared with law enforcement. We've previously discussed airport fingerprinting measures in the United States and Japan. Quoting: "All four million domestic passengers who will pass through Terminal 5 annually after it opens on March 27 will have four fingerprints taken, as well as being photographed, when they check in. To ensure the passenger boarding the aircraft is the same person, the fingerprinting process will be repeated just before they board the aircraft and the photograph will be compared with their face. Dr Gus Hosein, of the London School of Economics, an expert on the impact on technology on civil liberties, is one of the scheme's strongest critics. He said: 'There is no other country in the world that requires passengers travelling on internal flights to be fingerprinted. BAA says the fingerprint data will be destroyed, but the records of who has travelled within the country will not be, and it will provide a rich source of data for the police and intelligence agencies.'"

I see your fear and raise you Brazil !

[Anonymous Coward]

I see your Orwellian fear and raise you Brazil !!

Re:So what's the point?

[palegray.net]

They can have my fingerprints when they pry them from my cold, dead... oh, wait.

Riiiiiight...

[RiffRafff]

"Airport executives claim that the data will be stored for no longer than 24 hours, and will not be shared with law enforcement."

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Re:I see your fear and raise you Brazil !

[OECD]

I see your Orwellian fear and raise you Brazil !!

Call. Full Gattica! Woo-hoo!

Two words...

[CheeseTroll]

inflatable copilot.

Re:So what's the point?

[pokerdad]

Obviously no timebombs are ever designed using a timer that can count beyond 24 hours. *rolles eyes*

Of course they can't count beyond 24 hours - Jack Bauer only ever has 24 hours!

Re:So what's the point?

[__aapspi39]

I thought we needed to shed our civil liberties in order to win the war on terror; if it turns out that the real enemy are the single mums, maybe there's some clever way of targeting all the surveillance on them?