US Expands Airport Biometric Data Collection 231
athloi sends word of an expansion of the US-VISIT program that now requires two fingerprints from foreign visitors arriving at scores of airports. Beginning later this year the US will be testing a system that collects 10 digital fingerprints, at 10 major points of entry. A US Homeland Security director assured EU officials that the program would operate under strict privacy rules. But he noted that the FBI and CIA will have access to the biometric data, which over time may expand beyond fingerprints.
"Points of entry"? (Score:5, Funny)
That sounds painful... Eeek.
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If I remember correctly from the original Matrix movie,
the belly button is an option.
But in that case I guess the 'subject' lost another point of entry.
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(in no particular order) ... Comments?
Re:"Points of entry"? (Score:5, Interesting)
- Anus
- Urethra
- Right ear
- Left ear
- Mouth
- Right tear canal
- Left tear canal
- Right nostril
- Left nostril
- Brain access hole
You don't have a brain access hole? Don't worry, trepanation will soon be required for entry at US airports.Vagina not on the list of major ports of entry? That would be sexual harassment, someone might get upset!
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Re:"Points of entry"? (Score:5, Funny)
After going through 'Security', you will leak like a sieve. But after that first deflowering, it shouldn't be that bad the next time.
But you'll never be able to fly Virgin Airways again.
Middle finger (Score:2)
If I lived abroad, (Score:5, Insightful)
~cromar
Re:If I lived abroad, (Score:5, Informative)
*I've been before, but before all this "security" and I would dearly love to visit again.
I'd beg to differ (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I'd beg to differ (Score:5, Insightful)
I get the point, alright. It seems the rest of the world are more interested in visiting places other than the USA!
Oh, and PS. It's not insignificant. ~1% of direct GDP accounts for a hell of a lot of indirect employment. Many, many people in your country would be up the creek without the proverbial paddle, claiming jobless assistance and generally severely weakening your economy in a quite short time.
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With the dollar in free fall against other currencies the US is a great deal.
Isn't that worth a wild ride on the DHS probulator?
Re:If I lived abroad, (Score:5, Interesting)
I even avoid long flights that have a connection there, simply because a lot of euro travellers I know have been hassled by the security drones to the point of missing their flight.
I'll probably reconsider in a few years when this lunacy is behind us, but for now, South America, the rest of Europe, Asia, the Pacific and Africa offer lots of travel opportunities for me (except that for some reason I still regularly have to point out that I'm not from the US in a lot of places before people get friendly, comes with English still being the world's ligua franca).
Quite sad really.
Re:If I lived abroad, (Score:5, Insightful)
I have never been fingerprinted before in my life; and the only thing I associate with fingerprinting is somebody being arrested in a police station.
If I have to travel to the US for business; I can live with it - I hopefully won't get sent off to somewhere 3rd world for a few years for holding an anti-bush political stance (at least not yet).
But if I am choosing a destination to travel to for a holiday, or even as a stop over on the way to Europe from NZ (i.e. not even entering the US), I don't want my kids marched off a plane, fingerprinted and photographed by some foreign power for stupid paranoid reasons. Would a US citizen want their kids treated like that by say Russian government agents if they were travelling to Asia?
Question is, while my 6 yr old daughter could be a terrorist threat or a drug dealer, so could any random American citizen. So how long before Bush admin starts thinking that taking 10 fingerprints and DNA samples from all American citizens is a good idea? My guess is that little project is already well under way.
So its probably no big deal to the US - I am just one individual not passing though the US lightly, but don't be surprised that in the future people like my kids have increasing apathy and even dislike of the US. When I was a young kid, I and my school friends all wanted to go to the US and Disneyland; as a sign of the times, my kids are now more keen to go to Paris.
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They are the thin ones.
The fat ones that block your wiew are texans
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I mean, I'm all for travelling and seeing the world, but with all the changes we've read about the last couple of years, it's just not worth it. Or to put it rather more plainly: Fuck'em, I'm not that interested in seeing the Land of Opportunity anyway.
Hm.
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Beyond fingerprint (Score:5, Insightful)
2010 press release (Score:4, Insightful)
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As a Canadian... (Score:4, Insightful)
Since US Customs agents are in most major Canadian airports, we're pre-screened and don't come through "international" arrival gates... so anyone boarding in Canada won't get checked.
Great job, security folks...
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And this wil help how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Deduction Watson! (Score:5, Funny)
Hidden Costs (Score:4, Interesting)
I work for a very large multi-national company. Not long ago I sat through a talk that was given by the head of our European operations. He said that US airport security is getting so bad that people outside the US are avoiding coming here at all costs! Apparently, we're losing some serious business and tourism money, just because of our bone-headed "security" rules.
Ten fingerprints? I know I wouldn't travel anywhere where one was required!
Anyway, it's just something to think about.
And the strange thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hidden Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
In my field, research science, the effects of the strict US rules are very apparent. Foreign scientists are having a harder and harder time coming to the US to study, collaborate, or even go to a conference. Scientists are being denied visas or putting on long waiting lists (so that they miss the conference!). The end result is a decrease in the amount of scientific collaborations between US groups and those outside the US, and more emphasis being put on non-US conferences (in Europe, Canada, Japan, etc.).
This is having a real (though difficult to measure) impact on US science. In a subtle way, there is a decrease in the flow of "advanced technical knowledge" into the US, which is to the detriment of US labs. Through these border policies, the US is isolating itself. Since ultimately science and technology are big drivers of the US economy, I see this as a very poor choice on the part of the US administration.
Re:Hidden Costs (Score:5, Insightful)
<Obligatory trollish note> Given that a scarily high proportion of people in the US seem to think Intelligent Design is science, and three presidential candidates said on the record that they do not believe in evolution, I doubt these people have even noticed the decline in scientific advance, never mind questioned why it might be happening. </Obligatory trollish note>
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Also:
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Not that I don't h
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But the French funded our revolution. We fought two wars against the British, the war for Independence and the War of 1812, in which the British stormed Washington DC and burned the White House. Our founders seriously considered making French the official language for government affairs.
But I gue
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In Canada it is a stereo-type that Canadians are nice, and Americans are rude, yet I remember hearing on the news (a year or two ago) a study done that shows Canadi
Past doesn't inspire confidence... (Score:3, Informative)
As past [theregister.co.uk] events have shown [washingtonpost.com], the innocent have plenty to fear from this, even if they have nothing to hide.
False positives could really ruin your day.
On the other hand, if it were to happen, once a false positive ordeal is over, I suppose it could be [cbsnews.com] rather lucrative [washingtonpost.com], given the precident that has been set [cnn.com].
And this guy was a U.S. citizen. Imagine the result if you were a citizen of another country and subject to the same sort of mistake.
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Ten Fingers is a Joke (Score:5, Interesting)
The system might be able to save 10 prints, but you only need 1 or 2 at most.
A couple of FYI's.
1. It's unlikely they'll store fingerprints. They typically store some kind of proprietary hash value of the fingerprint.
2. It's unlikely they'll make the authentication available to other agencies.
3. Interoperability with other countries is desired, but not likely as each system vendor makes certain that won't actually occur.
4. I will be very interested to find out if they actually get to a point where there are fingerprint readers in airports more than a couple of airports. The scale of the operation overwhelms current technology pretty quickly.
The time to be worried was long, long ago as most of your data has been collected by private agencies and sold to the government for decades now.
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1. It's unlikely they'll store fingerprints. They typically store some kind of proprietary hash value of the fingerprint.
Don't you have to have identical scans of fingerprints, and I mean identical down to each and every pixel, to have a match of two different hashes of the same fingerprint? Unless you are somehow hashing properties of the fingerprint image itself, such as the relative position of loops and whorls, rather than a hash of the binary data of the image.
Isn't matching fingerprints a hard AI problem? In order to match finger prints with a program, you would have to have the full image, I would thing. And even t
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Yes. That's why machines tend to have very poor accuracy rates, and the end result always has to be checked by an expert.
That's easy to do when you're dealing with a clear-cut, small crime scene, you've narrowed the perpetrator down to a few dozen suspects and they're likely to be still alive. None of those apply to a major terrorist attack.
I feel so welcome ... (Score:2)
If it wasn't for my in-laws, I'd be spending my vacations in more welcoming places, but I just have no choice.
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Thats ok. The US dollar is sinking, the US economy is stagnating, the US government thinks it can talk tough and fight wars on concepts with no consequences. Wait. The reckoning is coming soon. All the money is leaving the US, since the real growth is happening in Russia, India and Asia.
But look on the bright side - when the US is no longer a world leader, I guess no one
New Colossus v2.0 -- Even Newer (Score:2)
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Oh wait, no fingers!?! GTF outta here..
No really, get out.
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"Give me your fingers."
Yeah, here's both of them.
reason for the move to 10 fingers (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.washingtontechnology.com/print/20_15/2
the real effect and reason for US-VISIT v2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
You land at one of the big international airports, for me O'Hare or Logan (both of which will be on this extended program). You have your passport with visa, an I-20 from your school and a filled out I-94 card ready. There are several queues, usually about 3-4 dedicated to American citizens, and a comparable number for foreigners. There is typically a lot more of the latter than the former so the queues meant for American citizens are typically empty, while the remaining queues are long and winding. I've seen a few elderly people faint during the wait in the queue before. There isn't any place to sit, and no way to get water. They've already been on long flights - the one from Madras, India where I am from usually takes ~20+ hrs with layovers.
You wait inching forward, and eventually you get to the yellow line - make sure you stand behind the yellow line (if you have a toe over you will likely get screamed at) until the Immigration official deigns to examine your papers. Not you mind - they never look at you - only your papers.
They always ask you what your name and the purpose of your visit is (never mind its on all three documents you've given them). Eventually they ask for your fingerprint. Left index finger. Scanner doesn't register that right. Do it again. Right index finger. Now pose for your mugshot. Now its going to be all ten fingers. I'm waiting for the DNA sample requests. As an added bonus they can ask you to boot your laptop up to take a look at it (the poor dears look so very confused by a slackware based distro with fluxbox)
I can tell you what US-VISIT v2.0 won't do. It won't make you safer or stop threats to the US of A from crossing your border. It hasn't so far. If it had we'd have heard about it. Going from two fingerprints to ten won't do shit either. Where the evil terrorists somehow able to defeat a hash from just two fingerprints? Can you somehow identify me to a higher confidence level now that you have all ten fingerprints instead of two? Making it ten fingers still isn't going to help unless there is some database with a bunch of terrorists with the fingerprints on file to check against. With two you can prevent people coming in under a different name. Funny how many of the 9/11 terrorists had to do that...
With ten fingerprints you can share more with other countries and see who has been visiting nasty places like Afghanistan to go to those evil terrorist training camps except that no other country I've ever visited collected my fingerprints. Ever. Nor have they made me wait in long queues to get in either. Occasionally they've even smiled at me! When we went to Canada for an APS conference in 2003, the border guard never checked my passport or visa (there was another Indian, and a Nigerian in our van along with three Americans) and joked about not bringing too many mini-kegs back with us.
I can tell you the effect this will have - it will increase the length of those queues. It will annoy more people. People who want to do business here. People who are old and want to just see their family, and have to wait in a line for two damn hours to be welcomed to America by a surly immigration official. Those people will stop coming. If everyone stops coming you will be safer! Its going to cost you and me more money (I get to pay taxes here too) since most of these airports won't be able to handle the load if a large number of international flights get here around the same time and will need larger waiting areas. It will probably create some new jobs for people who want to be surly immigration officials. And its going to get some DHS official a pat on the back and a promotion for actively fighting the terrorists. Lets not kid ourselves - that is what its about.
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I too happen to be a physics student from India studying in Texas. I came in through San Fransisco but a few months after 9/11, when paranoia was supposedly at an all time high. Everybody told me to be wary of being strip-searched, stand in long queues, get "teh eeevil eye from teh nasty-nasty Yanks"
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Right! If you've got nothing to hide, spread 'em, bend over, and take it like a bitch! And I'm sure that ain't in that leftie book of famous last words...
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Right on! All those tanks and fighter-bombers sure have brought peace and happiness to Kashmir!
Maybe if they didn't strap bombs to their own babies and hurled them at people, tried to establish Sharia law in the whole region, and ethnically cleanse Kashmir of all non-Muslim minorities this wouldn't have been necessary. It's just like the levant basically. Islamists work to force democracies to withdraw, democracies protect their citizens, leftists blame it all on the democracies... And read about how the Indian Army crushed the Islamist insurgency in Hyderabad in 5 days after independence After tha
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The lines on the spanish Barajas airport were just as long, and the police at the airport stopped me twice because I had a beard. Maybe I looked muslim but I'm fucking mexican, I even spoke their language.
They strip searched me, and made me (and my family who were standing with me) almost miss my flight, after asking dumb questions like "Why do you carry this pouch inside of your shirt?". It was one of t
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I am wondering how many terrorists "flew" to India!
A surprisingly large number actually.I mentioned a particular terrorist group Lashkar-e-Toiba for a reason. They have extensive involvement in Chechnya and other parts of Central Asia and they fly back and forth.
Your hatred for "anything/anyone" who does not look/speak like you is very interesting.
Really? How do you know what I look like or speak like? Presumably you're trying to smear me as some sort of "bigot" where all I see is the typical leftist tripe , leftist bigotry and tinfoil hat conspiracist paranoia of slashdot modded up as "Insightful".No, sir. I hate nobody. I do, however, lov
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not sure that's scientifically sound, but it seems like it would at least make it easier to spot the amateur or newly recruited terrorist.
I for one applaud this imaginative initiative... (Score:2)
Quantum WTF!? (Score:2)
athloi sends word of an expansion of the US-VISIT program that now requires two fingerprints from foreign visitors arriving at scores of airports.
That's a pretty impressive feat - to arrive at multiple airports at the same time. Generally humans can only arrive in one place at a time. Have the evil terrorists developed some sort of cloning, or is this more of a space-time wormhole type deal? The authorities should probably start looking out for blue police boxes making funny "wooga wooga" sounds.
What if... (Score:2, Funny)
Is it required? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Meanwhile, local Hells Angels chapters (Score:2)
These are good security measures (Score:5, Interesting)
Oil will get only more expensive, with weak currency, US might not afford the oil anymore.
Just a thought, It may well be all false.
Look out! Terrorists are hiding in the zoo! (Score:3, Insightful)
To start : Open the borders and make airports cool again. Tear down all the scanners and let people walk through the gates to see planes take off. Quit worrying that someone might blow up this or that and start focusing on making money. There are no terrorists hiding under your goddamn bed, so you can quit shitting in it every time you see the lights flicker. If you need big daddy government to make yourself feel safe, then you have no business calling yourself a Republican. Every Republican should stand up and demand that these pussies that co-opt our party be held to account. Conservatism is supposed to mean taking things in perspective, even in supposedly dire circumstances, with a confidence to handle your own affairs. There has been absolutely no perspective in this war, just overreaching knee jerk reactions like a woman burning down her house to get a mouse. Tell Anne Coulter that if she has to have this war on terror to feel safe, she ought to get back in the fucking kitchen and start making dinner like a good Republican dike is supposed to do.
The leaders of this conservative movement have completely failed, and I'm almost disgusted with myself that I even used to listen to the likes of Rush. "Oh, the terrorists are going to get us." Dude, I bench almost 300lbs. Bring that old f--- Bin Laden on, and I'll punch him in his fucked up kidney and that will be the end of him. Swagger, that's how you fight these people. Arrogant faith in freedom and delighting in our consumer lifestyle. This introspective, fearful war on terror is the most profoundly un-American response to any crisis that I have seen in my lifetime. Americans are not supposed to be afraid of anything, and here we are crying like a bunch of pansies because of some dude with a beard. Death! We all have to go. Get over it. If you believed in God as much as you said you do, you would not be afraid to die for freedom yourself, by the way, like you ask our soldiers to do.
I thought we already proved with the Cold War that backwards ideologies bring themselves down and that all we need to do is focus on making money to win. All of this crap that we hear about terrorists plotting this or that is the same shit we heard before about Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and more... (fill in the blank) secret agents are plotting to destroy the USA. Get off the Oxy, quit dreaming up conspiracies, and walk down the street confident that you can kick some terrorist ass or die trying if it comes down to it. I'd rather worry about the occasional arab that might look suspicious than every camera that surely is. I'm not afraid of no islamist, and neither should you be.
Slightly off topic: the new "Freedom Center" (Score:2)
I was browsing through some frequent flyer forums to get the lowdown on the latest regulations regarding the carriage of dihydrogen monoxide [dhmo.org] on planes when I came across a link to this beautiful nugget:
"Transportation Security Operations Center Re-Named Freedom Center"
On June 21, TSA's primary operational hub was re-named the Freedom Center, symbolizing the agency's commitment to protecting the nation's transportation systems against terrorist threats...
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(erk, push submit instead of preview)
The TSA being the Transportation Security Administration, the people in charge of your airport security. The quote is from here [tsa.gov].
So I guess that'll be Freedom Fingerprints they'll be collecting then.../p
Surprising (Score:2)
It doesn't help even on airports (Score:5, Insightful)
Options: (Score:5, Funny)
[_] "You can have my fingerprints when you pry them from my cold dead hands!"
[_] "I don't have any fingers, you insensitive clod."
[_] "Fingerprints? I'll give you the finger, all right ..."
[_] (prominently displaying copy of Hustler) "You really want to take my fingerprints? Do you know where my hands have just been?"
[_] "A...CHOO! Oops - do you have a hanky? The kids ain't gonna believe the size of this greener ..."
All this means is more people avoiding the US rather than submit to being treated like criminals unless proven otherwise.
Points of entry (Score:2)
I can think of 7 points of entry (nostrils, ears, mouth..). How are they going to make another 3?
Re:It doesn't help even on airports (Score:5, Insightful)
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From the article:
The current two-fingerprint arrival system is being used in 115 airports, 15 seaports and 154 land border checks. About 100 million fingerprints have been taken so far, and more than 34,000 people whose names showed up on U.S. watch lists were denied entry, Wright said.
They'll probably expand the program later on. Yes, I don't see the value either...
What the fuck? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they're dangerous enough to be on a "watch list" why aren't we arresting them when we catch them?
Oh, too dangerous to be allowed in
You've been rejected at this border point. Please try another border point for entry.
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Why stop at finger printing people entering the US? Start grabbing this information as people *leave* the US. Then, to make the process easier, just tatoo everyone with a number on their forearm. Wait a second...
I think that this will have some ramifications that the DHS just aren't seeing. Like an overall decrease in the diversity of tourists and immigrants. Or potentially crippling the travel industry completely. How many
Re:that's nice... (Score:5, Insightful)
So good, it had to be repeated (Score:4, Informative)
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You can bet that their names are on the watch lists now. Just to be sure.
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If they ever did deploy it at all airports (Score:3, Insightful)
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And they ensure privacy while saying they will share biometric data with other government agencies. This does not sound like privacy to me. I'm sure this will effect a lot of social activists and church groups, but I don't see it s
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The Mythbusters would disagree with you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA4Xx5Noxyo [youtube.com]
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Problem solved!
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Now that's just silly - I've heard you can fool those scanners by using a simple gelatin copy of a valid v-print.
(...flash forward 2 weeks to my next airport visit...)
Re:All the security is for nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
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"What's to stop somebody from landing (a watercraft) somewhere along the enormous coastline of Hudson's Bay, and simply hoofing it through the Canadian wilderness"
Two words - Deer Flies.
They BITE! And when they bite, they also take a chunk of meat out of you.
Multiply that by a few hundred times an hour, for weeks on end. You'll be happy to turn yourself in to the nearest cop, if you haven't killed yourself first.
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You can kill someone stone dead in a few seconds with a bath towel, you know. Or with a pair of pantyhose and a can of soda. Or god knows what else.
The point is, short of stripping everyone naked and zip-tying them into their seats, you can't keep someone from attacking the crew on a plane. You might be able to stop them from taking control of it by reinforcing the cockpit, maybe building the aircraft without an interior door,
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-The 9/11 hijackers did not pass through customs that day.
-They obtained at least some of their box-cutters after going through security.
-I can't imagine they behaved "suspiciously" in any way that thousands of innocent people don't also behave every day.
-One of them was on a government watch list, but this list was not, and is not, provided to airport personel.
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Would this flight be cheap? Most likely not.
If "bad guy" already had a round trip ticket, would the airline make him pay a "change fee" to immediately reschedule his flight? Most likely.
Affect the bottom line of the airline? Doesn't look like it.
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Obviously less foreigners are going to fly into the United States, therefore less revenue.
Yes, I'm sure of it. I know it's popular to gripe about airport security inside the US, but it's nothing compared to what you have to go through on a flight going to the United States. To board a US-bound plane from Ninoy Aquino airport in Manila you have to go through 3 checkpoints. Once at the door (everywhere in the Philippines you will find armed guards at the entrances to public buildings and you can always expect to be searched - they have a real terrorist problem), once at customs, and once deep i
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Because in civilized nations, fingerprinting is usually reserved for people suspected of a crime.
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In Japan if you have a visa you are required to be fingerprinted and carry an alien card (the gaijin card). When I lived there, one fingerprint was displayed on the card, though they have since phased out the picture, but not the fingerprinting requirement.
In the Philippines an alien (or any citizen) is r
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Please explain how fingerprinting the entire world will prevent a terrorist attack? I'd really love to hear your reasoning.
The ONLY thing it will do is help if such fingerprints are later found on bomb fragments, or in a terrorist "house", etc. And it will tie a set of fingerprints to an "alia
Re:Why don't I see this as a bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it won't defeat terrorism.
Try to remember that terrorism is not an import. Before 9/11 we had Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber, Eric Rudolph, and host of serial killers and mass murderers that were entirely homegrown. Fingerprinting all civilians inserts the impression that all are suspect, and creates a strong resentment towards the people in power who appear to be immune from suspicion. Increased restrictions on freedom (yes, that's the same "freedom" our president claims to be protecting) only reinforces resentment, and this can lead to an overtly hostile populace. Stop to consider that this very same populace is fed a steady stream of stories about government corruption and you have a fine recipe for revolt.
This is not the idea that is "America", this is a perversion.
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"One does not speak so much of freedom as in a place where it has ceased to exist"
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Contrary to some asshat mod's assertion, the schmucks in the White House have everything to do with this discussion. Think about it: The government wants to track our every move we make within and outside our country's border but doesn't believe they should be accountable to us?
A giant, red, glow-in-the-dark What the Fuck goes out to our government for this one.