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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."
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.
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
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.
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.
Does anyone recall the little fact that none of the September 11 hijackers traveled under a false identity?
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
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.
If you blog it...
... 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!
Push the envelope. Watch it bend. -Tool
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...
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.
"Stumble before you crawl"
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.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
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.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
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.
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.
See my journal, I write things there
*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.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.