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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."
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.
- I love animals. I try to eat at least one a day.
I dont know about anyone else, but when I was young we all went on a "field trip" to the local jail and courthouse and had our fingerprints taken. Of course we all thought it was fun seeing where all the mean old people were kept but looking back I wouldn't be suprised if my prints wound up in a database somewhere..
Brazil I guess is making every American do a fingerprint test to get into the country as a response to what the story is about. I found it pretty funny..
More: Brazilian authorities quickly altered the procedure from "get all 10 fingers" to "get thumb only" because in the USA they're taking thumb only. Now THAT is tit-for-tatness!
Who do we expect to protect our boarders for us? Canada?
Uh, no you shouldn't expect Canada to protect your borders for you, and the moral implication repeated constantly (such as your pathetic little sheep-like "oh wait") that we should is absolutely ludicrous. As a Canadian, I personally have no problem with the US crawling down into the basement, curling up into the fetal position and sucking its thumb -- It is your country, and as a visitor people simply have to accept each country's sovereign right to self-protection. Of course this measure would have done absolutely nothing to prevent 9/11, nor does it do anything to affect the hundreds of sleeper cells in the US, nor does it do anything but provide the illusion of safety for the ignorant (such as yourself). Of course this is from the same administration that is so bloody uninventive and unoriginal that they can only imagine that terrorist could only possibly conceive of hijacking airliners and smashing them into buildings -- until the terrorists put toxins in the water supply, at which point they'll then imagine that the world's terrorists are perpetually focused on putting toxins in water supplies...rinse and repeat.
Having said that, it is fascinating, though -- The United States currently hosts some 8 to 11 MILLION illegal aliens. The United States has rampant illegal weapons and drug trade. The United States Southern border has a guesstimated 6,000, uncaught, illegals crossing it every single day. Yeah, keep up the Canada jokes...You and Hillary Clinton can keep up the charade that we're the source of your security ills.
... and once we all get used to this, I wonder how long it will be before they want to fingerprint ALL airline passangers. Many might say I am paranoid, but I have always been worried about "having control" of my fingerprints -- yeah, yeah, I realize I leave them behind everywhere, but there's something scary to me about the government having them. Just too bad that they don't have some kind of device that I could be reasonably sure would check my fingerprints against the known criminals and then DISCARD them -- I'd feel much better if I knew that they weren't keeping a permenant record of them for possible future use who-knows-when and who-knows-how. And, please, don't give me the age old line of "If you've done nothing wrong, what are you afraid of?" Some of us just like privacy (and respect it in others) for the sake of it.
This is crazy. Next thing you know they will be forcing all visitors to our free land to be finger printed and mug shots taken.
Foreigners pre-guilty until checked into Guantanamo Bay.
With the state of the US, I can't even make up a funny slippery slope, cause we are already at the bottom of the hill.
Funny thing about those countries where they cut off your finger. They only cut off the fingers of the criminals.
This measure (a) will do nothing to stop terrorism or crime, (b) will give the government inappropriate powers to track foreigners, and (c) is the thin edge of the wedge that will lead to mandatory fingerprinting of ALL foreign nationals (and non-native-born citizens) as well as mandatory ID cards, which must be carried at all times. Just like Hitler did with the gays and jews.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Zacarias Moussaoui, supposedly involved in 9/11, is a French citizen. Richard Reid, the "Shoe bomber" on an AA flight, is British. There must be more where those came from. All countries should be fingerprinted if this is to be an effective measure.
See charts for twitter trends on Trendistic
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.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Disclaimer: This is not my work, I got it in an email and thought it was relevant to "president" Bush's Homeland policy building:
Consider the following, it's an old tactic: Adolf Hitler presided over a major national disaster (the burning of the Reichstag, the national parliament building) which he was discovered later to have participated in creating. That event gave him the opportunity to declare an emergency and expand his dictatorial powers further. He used the war-terminology "homeland" often, and whipped up fervent patriotism to support his wars. He used war as a means to distract people from domestic troubles and issues, kept the population of the country in constant fear, and exploited that fear for his own purposes. Hitler said in his writings that if you cannot create war then at least continue to propagate the idea that war is coming. -- R. E. Bell
"Never leave people in peace, because when they are in peace, you are nobody. Then they don't need you; your very purpose is gone. They need you only when there is danger; so create danger. If there is not real danger, at least create the climate of a false danger." -- Adolf Hitler
Important info:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net
http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm
http://www.peakoil.net
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.
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.
I for one welcome our new SCOviet Russian overlords to whom all our base are belong.
how funny is this article that unwillingly proves the inefficiency of that measure.
After a short presentation, we have the list of countries that are exempted from having their tourists and/or workers scanned. Which countries are these ? Europe, Japan, Australia. I can understand for the two latters, but if September 11th proved something, it's that terrorist networks are deep-rooted in Western societies, especially Europe and the US. So, guys, you still have until October to make a great deal of this measure.
Plus a nice snippet in this paragraph : The travel data are supposed to be securely stored. Oh, Yeah.
The funniest thing is that people do believe in that kind of crap. They think it will make their country more secure. They think that preventing a crime or other legal issues -(Oh, Yeah)- charged person will prevent them from having some other non-beared people bombing towers with suicide planes. Or maybe it's the governement that initially thinks it will make the people more confident. Until the next time. But for now it's working. Psychological assault, well done.
Apart from that, there are remarks to make on a more general scale :
Again, I'm not trying to depict a black and white landscape. It's not the Arabs versus the Americans. But indeed it has some things to do with the global relationship of the West with them. Think about it ; we've been playing the geopolitic bastards with them for more than a century now. How may they feel ?
Regards,
jdif
Reminder : I'm not Arab :)
Let's overcome our weakness.
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.
Lasers Controlled Games!
It's called identity theft.
As for the photograph, many of us USians know just how little a state issued ID photo has to look like its carrier...
Ever had a flight delayed because the mechanics thought something was wrong, then it turned out to be no big deal? Would you rather they just shrug their shoulders and have the plane take off, anyway?
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
No they dont. I have never been printed in my life until I arrived at JFK the other day. Ergo, in terms of identifying me, the check was entirely pointless.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
The waiver skips fingerprinting only if you are visiting briefly, with only sightseeing purpose, or for very limited business activities (like a trade show.)
8 of 19 alleged hijackers are still alive.
Waleed M Alshehri - alive and well in Casablanca, Morocco
Marwan Al Shehhi - Alive; same link as above
Ahmed Alghamdi - Alive; same link as above
Wail M Alshehri - Alive
Ahmed Alnami - Alive; same link as above
Abdulaziz Alomari - Working for Saudi Telecom
Salem Alhamzi - Working at a petrochemical company
Saeed Alghamdi - Alive; same link as above
its all feel good bullshit thats the real reason and raising the terrist threat level is a classic case of Catch 22 if they didnt and some major shit hit the fan people would have screamed "WHY DIDNT YOU RAISE THE LEVEL!!!" and since they raised it and nothing happaned people now scream "WHY DID YOU RAISE THE LEVEL!!" I do agree this is all BS to make people "feel" safe.
This is obviously immigration control disguised as an anti-terrorist measure.
The stories we are being spun just seem like a grown up version of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. and
THRUSH. The Man From U.N.C.L.E
I am concerned as to how the War on Terror affects me, personally. Already I was never entirely
trusting of tall buildings and so no change there. I am a little nervous of flying but there
are enough things to go wrong already that hijacking is just another problem. And as we are
going to win the War on Terror, so we are told, I will be able to re-enter high buildings and
sleep on planes. But only when everyone who hates us is dead will tall buildings and planes
be safe. A lot of people are going to have to die.
Which is insane! There must be another way.
Anyway, back to the mundane issue of how this all effects me. And you. We are all being told
by our governments to be vigilent. We are on variously coloured alerts of several levels of
seriousness. We have to be on the lookout for terrorists. Which presents us with a problem:
How do we identify a terrorist? By suspicious activity. We have no choice but to tolerate
being viewed suspiciously by the police and other more secretive government agencies.
This news story from CNN provides insight as to what is meant when the authorities say that
some activity is "suspicious" or "consistent with known methods of al-Qaida". You might
already be guilty of this behaviour so click here:
Don't annotate your almanac!
Perhaps it is one of my many character flaws but I find I am unable to obey _all_ the laws
_all_ the time. Sometimes I feel guilty just passing by a policeman. [Othertimes, like you,
I smile and say hello.] Did he see me jay-walking? Have I fastened my seat belt? Is he
aware I have annotated my almanac?
I assure you this does not happen often but next time my collar is felt by the local constabulary
I wonder if, having now read the CNN article, I will find myself babbling that the jottings
in the margins of my copy of Lonely Planet are not "suspicious".
USA and UK law allows a policeman to arrest someone he suspects of terrorist activity and that person can be help incommunicado but lawyers
are critical because the laws are pretty vague about what this activity is. Such activity,
presumably, would be "consistent with known methods of al-Qaida". By the measure of the USA's
FBI advice to policemen described in CNN's above referenced article it seems any of us can be arrested at any time.
Am I the only one who thinks that the erosion of civil liberties is unlikely to address the
threat of terrorism? Should you share my opinion about the suspension-of-liberty vs terror issue
(i.e. that it's not the either-or choice we are told it is) I advise you not to air it at USA
airport security. Were you to do so while you are prodded in the genitals both with enthusiasm
and a Geiger counter (or while they flick though your almanac) I bet you would miss your flight.
In my view liberty is fragile and is threatened more by authoritarians than by terrorists.
All these supposed counter-terrorist measures are getting too invasive and pervasive for me.
Paul Beardsell
...and tonight, as I was trying to rush through customs from one flight to a connecting flight, the entire validation system went down for about 15 minutes, leaving me and about 200 other people in a panic of nailbiting anxiety. The customs agent told me that the crash was due to their having installed the new software needed for the fingerprinting and photo database, and apparently the system had gone down all over the US. All the agents were issued backup CDs to boot up from (although my agent seemed to be having a hard time figuring out how to put the CD into the drive) and then things were back to normal, although presumably without the new photo/fingerprinting system. All the computers were running W2K Professional and had a cool (tho ominous) Department of Homeland Security logo on them.
... at Miami International....none of the people I saw going through it seemed to have any problem with it
Many passengers through Miami come from Latin American countries. Expectations of privacy in Latin American countries are much lower; I would venture a guess that all LatAm nations have a national ID card with a fingerprint. (At least the ones I know of...)And with, as another poster noted, people being scared of customs officials, they'll do whatever they can.
Brazil takes itself a bit more seriously than other LatAm nations. They have the weight to throw around if they wanted, and they're used to being listened to much more than El Salvador. They resent being treated as less than Europeans. It's not so much the fingerprinting, as much as the grouping.
The USSR wouldn't have survived without proxy-armies battling its expansion?
What armies and what expansion? Since USSR was founded, Finland separated from it, and the only army that actually fought for USSR Communists was their own (sometimes "helping" governments that didn't ask them, though that was quite rare, and limited to the immediate neighbors). USSR had its sphere of influence, but for the whole its history it didn't do anything to expand it, with the exception of WWII when it became inevitable. Its economy was closed, it could get no benefit from trying to be a robber baron, so its military policy was defensive (and shut up about Afghanistan already, it shared the border with USSR, and was massively messed with by some very hostile groups of people -- not that the situation changed much since then). "Support" of Iraq and other "allies" in the Middle East and Africa was a drain on the USSR, and even now those countries owe huge amounts of money to Russia, that they have no intention to pay back.
US on the other hand, did everything that you accuse USSR for -- supported foreign wars, created proxy armies, expanded its military presence to pretty much everything from Japan to Germany to Cuba, not to mention that its involvement with other countries always ended up providing benefits for American big businesses at everyone else's expense.
I have a long list of things I blame Communists/former USSR government/current Russian government for, but the things you have mentioned just aren't there, and to put it simply, you are ignorant about history.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
This system just adds to a database. A LARGE database, actually created by a company I indirectly work for. (And we will leave it at that.)
Any time you make a travel reservation - airline, car, hotel - anything - it is categorically stored and used in later profiling. This happens now, I am sitting not 200 feet from systems which contain this very data, as I type this message! And I mean, every single little tiny detail of your information that you submit (everything) is captured.
Fingerprint ID is just a way to tie you personally and physically into this same information store. One of the fundmental difficulties of profiling criminals is determining their identities - however if you can cross-reference millions of peoples' information with their physical ID, profiling of that data becomes a more trivial task.
Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant. I know this is happening because I know where the data comes from, and how it gets there. Here's the real kicker, hold on for this one... How can this be, you ask? "But this is invasion of privacy!" you say. Well, no. The government FUNDS these data stores, but they are handled by NON-GOVERNMENTAL agencies, at least in the collection of the data. It's all big corporate level stuff, who allows the government access. There are no checks on who can use it or how, because the government itself is not collecting the information. There is a big gaping loophole and I'm sure they'd rather you not know about it...
Then again, we're fighting a war across the world. Who has time for this crap anyway...
And neither are many of my co-nationals.
Since the US instituted these and other insane measure flight occupancy for flights from Mexico to the US has fallen by 30%.
For the first time I am reading and listening to middle class Mexicans that emphatically refuse to be treated like criminals.
No we don't like it, and as much as I regret it (I really wanted to see NY and Las Vegas) iw will follow your kind advice and will not visit your country until those demeaning measures are repelled.
My considerable purchasing power, and the one of as many people I manage to convince, can be used elsewhere.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I'm a US citizen who lives in Germany. My US state of residence is Texas. So when I went in to renew my driver's license while I was on vacation visiting my parents, the DMV insisted on fingerprints. I had to give up my fingerprints to get a freaking driver's license.
I'm not quite sure how that can harm me, but it really makes my skin crawl. If I had it to do over again without the surpise factor, I would have refused, and done without a US driver's license. I was in the process of getting my German license anyways.
On a related note: does anyone know if there are other states which require fingerprints for a driver's license? Does anyone know what happens if you actually refuse?
Read this below, note the date.
1 .s tm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/west_asia/3702
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
remember this slashdot article that reffered to that
:
crypto-gram issue ???
quote
Fun with Fingerprint Readers
Tsutomu Matsumoto, a Japanese cryptographer, recently decided to look at biometric fingerprint devices. These are security systems that attempt to identify people based on their fingerprint. For years the companies selling these devices have claimed that they are very secure, and that it is almost impossible to fool them into accepting a fake finger as genuine. Matsumoto, along with his students at the Yokohama National University, showed that they can be reliably fooled with a little ingenuity and $10 worth of household supplies.
Matsumoto uses gelatin, the stuff that Gummi Bears are made out of. First he takes a live finger and makes a plastic mold. (He uses a free-molding plastic used to make plastic molds, and is sold at hobby shops.) Then he pours liquid gelatin into the mold and lets it harden. (The gelatin comes in solid sheets, and is used to make jellied meats, soups, and candies, and is sold in grocery stores.) This gelatin fake finger fools fingerprint detectors about 80% of the time.
His more interesting experiment involves latent fingerprints. He takes a fingerprint left on a piece of glass, enhances it with a cyanoacrylate adhesive, and then photographs it with a digital camera. Using PhotoShop, he improves the contrast and prints the fingerprint onto a transparency sheet. Then, he takes a photo-sensitive printed-circuit board (PCB) and uses the fingerprint transparency to etch the fingerprint into the copper, making it three-dimensional. (You can find photo-sensitive PCBs, along with instructions for use, in most electronics hobby shops.) Finally, he makes a gelatin finger using the print on the PCB. This also fools fingerprint detectors about 80% of the time.
Gummy fingers can even fool sensors being watched by guards. Simply form the clear gelatin finger over your own. This lets you hide it as you press your own finger onto the sensor. After it lets you in, eat the evidence.
Matsumoto tried these attacks against eleven commercially available fingerprint biometric systems, and was able to reliably fool all of them. The results are enough to scrap the systems completely, and to send the various fingerprint biometric companies packing. Impressive is an understatement.
There's both a specific and a general moral to take away from this result. Matsumoto is not a professional fake-finger scientist; he's a mathematician. He didn't use expensive equipment or a specialized laboratory. He used $10 of ingredients you could buy, and whipped up his gummy fingers in the equivalent of a home kitchen. And he defeated eleven different commercial fingerprint readers, with both optical and capacitive sensors, and some with "live finger detection" features. (Moistening the gummy finger helps defeat sensors that measure moisture or electrical resistance; it takes some practice to get it right.) If he could do this, then any semi-professional can almost certainly do much much more.
More generally, be very careful before believing claims from security companies. All the fingerprint companies have claimed for years that this kind of thing is impossible. When they read Matsumoto's results, they're going to claim that they don't really work, or that they don't apply to them, or that they've fixed the problem. Think twice before believing them.
Matsumoto's paper is not on the Web. You can get a copy by asking:
Tsutomu Matsumoto
Here's the reference:
T. Matsumoto, H. Matsumoto, K. Yamada, S. Hoshino, "Impact of Artificial Gummy Fingers on Fingerprint Systems," Proceedings of SPIE Vol. #4677, Optical Security and Counterfeit Deterrence Techniques IV, 2002.
Some slides from the presentation are here:
presentati
I somehow doubt that those 70+ countries independantly established the presence of WMD in Iraq and did so conclusively and unequivocally. If they had done so, they would have been found by now. The very fact that none have been found, and that the team looking for the weapons has been massively scaled back could indicate one of a number of things:
- that they never existed in the first place which is why nothing has been found
- George don't misunderestimate me Bush and Tony Blah knew darn well that their intelligence on the matter was shaky but did the Dog & Pony show routine to create FUD and so justify going into Iraq and are now quietly scaling the search for WMD's down now that the public is not focussing its attention there any more
- Soddem Hussain had them buried very deep under the sand.
I think though, that on balance, the fact that no trace whatsoever has been found that would even remotely suggest that WMD's ever existed kinda speaks for itself, despite your 70+ countries. Here in the UK it is well known how unhappy the intelligence agencies were with the way in which the politicians used the information they were given. Dr David Kelly's death substantiates this. It has lead to a situation in the UK where i'd venture to say that the majority of the British public don't believe a word the government tells them anymore, and there is a stong concensus here that George Bush is the most dangerous man on the planet, and will say anything to justify his decision to invade Iraq.
The fingerprinting system may or may not prevent terrorist attacks - it's really impossible to say. In a way, it makes sense to get the visa system clean first (or at least try to clean up this horrible mess).
But what has apparently be overlooked by American authorities / officials is the psychological impact. It really pisses people off. Even here in europe.
I have dealt with the US immigrations authorities a lot (i was studying there) and it's hard to describe the feeling when you are at the receiving end of it. Maybe prison is comparable. You talk to people behind bullet-proof glass, watched by marines with M16s, go through security scans like at the airport, the place is filled with posters that show handcuffed people who broke some immigration law (implying: YOU could be one of them), and, what's worst, the immigration officers do not believe a single word you say - regardless of what it is they always suspect some kind of scam. Even the holy pope himsef would wonder if he had done something illegal.
And that's in Europe! Other places are probably even worse.
Fingerprinting and taking pictures is not improving this situation.
You reap what you sow. And american immigration sows distrust and suspicion. In order to win peace in the world, the USA must win the hearts and minds of people. As it is, America is doing the opposite, most visibly at its outposts all over the world. The free world, looking like a prison or fortress...
I am not against checks, but there has got to be a way to make this humane, and to remove this aura of complete and utter paranoia. (European newspapers were reporting of "snipers on roofs and marines in attack-helicopters on new year's even in NY... )
Have you considered that maybe, just maybe this isn't worth it? I mean, a lot less people get killed WORLDWIDE due to terrorism per YEAR than get killed in a single WEEK due to traffic accidents in the US alone.
When you look at numbers like that, doesn't it kind of put things into perspective?
Are you still so adamantly giving up your bill of rights, allowing your president to get away with sealing protesters (guys/galss/grandma's with placcards) into 'free speech zones' so the camera's don't see 'em (look this one up...chilling stuff indeed when you can arrest a grandma with a sign saying something against the current administration for standing in a crowd) and much more?
And what about the spending!? More than half the US' budget goes to defence and related activities...and that with you nation in debt, a depressed economy, illitaracy rampant, science graduates [who stay in the US] down, in other words a third world country economy...don't you think the money should be spent somewhere else?
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
Bush should have followed up on the warnings by placing the FBI, State and INS on a higher state of alert...
Just curious...what were your thoughts when we were recently placed on "a higher state of alert"?
Evil is the money of root.
If Clinton is responsible for 09.11, then George H. W. Bush is responsible for the 1993 bombing of the WTC. After all, Clinton only took office less than 2 months before that happened.
Both of these attacks were rather low-tech - a fuel and ferilizer bomb in 1993, and taking over planes with box cutters in 2001. I'm all for increasing National Security as long as the Constitution is not violated. If this high-tech fingerprint system can be effective without compromising the Constitution, great. As soon as it crosses the line (they are only fingerprinting Foreigners now, but who's to say won't expand in the future), then it is no longer acceptable. If Ashcroft et al can trash the Constitution, then the Terrorists have won and the Republic is lost.
Beware of Sleestak
Actually the USSR was preparing for expansion before WWII. They considered their responcibility to advance the communism elsewhere. And the war with Finland, and crabbing of baltic states was already planned ahead. It was just implementing the 19th century plans for defence of Leningrad... And they already made preparation years before WWII for attacking finland. Afghanistan was planned assault.
Europe after WWII was out of question due the nuke problem. China had too much population to deal with,
and middle east would of gotten them full scale war against Nato. So what they could of done?
I mean they didn't wan't to get a full scale war against nuclear states and wanted to expand anyway. Their hands where pretty much tied up. Their navy was not as capable for non nuclear warfare as NATO so getting a naval assault on small country was not an option. It was simple.
Before WWII they didn't have industry and military prepare for war. And after US got nukes, and there was strong enough allience to stop em with conventional weapons at non european fronts. Europe is a No, no for soviet expansion because of nato... Now what comes next... Middle east? Well thats US oil, and they properly estimated the result of getting a war in there. Next central asia, well they tried in afganistan, and last is china/mongolia, both communist regimes and war against mongolia would result war against china, with US supplying chinese infantry with weapons...
They expanded during WWII and tried to hold that as much as possible and tryid to expand also but failed. Basicly there was EXPANSIONIST individuals in power for some time. Like stalin and lenin...
(Yes Lenin was expansionist he just though that the country was not ready for it and was correct.)
Finlands,baltic states, belorussians and Ukranian s separation was part of a peace deal between russia and germany , and the war that formed USSR got two of those states back. One because it was base operations of the other fraction and other just because... The smaller states was left intact, just because the internal image would of hurt if they wouldn't shown that they kept their words, until the controlling system was build up.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
- Levy Taxes
- Borrow money on the credit of the United States.
- Spend when authorized by an approriations bill
- Pay the Federal debt
- Constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court
- Declare War
- Raise armies, a navy, and provide for the common defense
- Introduce constitutional amendments and choose the mode of ratification
- Call a Constitutional Convention on the application of two-thirds of the States
- Regulate interstate and foreign commerce.
- Coin Money
- Standardize the value of currency
- Regulate copyrights and patents
- Establish federal courts lower than the Supreme Court.
- Limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Federal Courts including the Supreme Court.
- Standardize weights and measures.
- Establish uniform times for elections.
- Control the Postal System
- Establish laws governing citizenship
- Make its own rules and discipline its own members.
- Provide for the punishment of counterfeiting, piracy, treason and other Federal Crimes.
- Exercise exclusive jurisdiction over the District of Columbia
- Establish Bankruptcy laws
- Override presidential vetoes.
- Oversee all Federal property and possesions
- Fill a vacancy in the presidency in cases of death or inability
- Receive and count electoral votes for the Presidency
- Keep and publish a journal of its proceedings
- Conduct a census every ten years.
- Approve treaties, cabinet level appointments, and appointments to the Supreme Court (Senate only).
- Impeach (House only) and try (Senate only) federal officers.
- Initiate all bills for raising revenue (House only).
If it ain't on this list, Congress can't do it (without violating the Tenth Amendment). The only possible source for this fingerprinting scheme would come from the Commerce Clause. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has allowed Congress to get away with using the Commerce Clause as a get-out-of-jail-free card to justify just about anything which might potentially have some nebulous and indirect connection with interstate commerce.Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I have no problem with the reciprocity, and in fact I think that forcing Americans to be fingerprinted is a great way to give then just a little taste of what it's like on the other side. That being said, I really don't think it's a good example of reciprocity; at least the U.S. has the resources to implement this program and (we can only hope) make it at least semi-efficient so that people aren't sitting around forever in the airport. Brazil is attempting to throw it all together hodge-podge (fingerprints on cardboard? what are they doing with these fingerprint records? seriously...). As anyone who has ever dealt with Brazilian authorities can tell you, they are notoriously inefficient and corrupt. So, whilst Brazilians with valid passports/visas will probably have to go through some inconvenience and a blatant, undeserved invasion of privacy, at least they'll most likely be done with it soon enough. Americans entering Brazil will probably have a much tougher time of it on average. Of course, if Brazil really wants to reciprocate, they can just let _almost_ everybody through, but once in a while they can pick someone at random to be detained, strip-searched, probed, and interrogated by officials with guns yelling at them in Portuguese, then eventually sent back to the U.S. with no explanation. But that would probably really piss some people off, and Brazil doesn't have an "anti-terrorism" blanket excuse for that sort of thing....
--Nate