Slashdot Mirror
Updated Schedule for U.S. Biometric Passports
SRain315 writes "The story from the Chicago Times via Yahoo! give more details about biometric information to be added to U.S. passports. Trial run this fall, full production next year. Slashdot covered this last year."
from article:
The goal is to prevent known terrorists from entering the country and to make the use of stolen passports virtually impossible.
this is useless, all it does is prevent existing known terrorists from trying to enter, not that they would be stupid enough to try anyways.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
The goal is to prevent known terrorists from entering the country and to make the use of stolen passports virtually impossible.
I'm sure that works well when the first-timers are suicide bombers that are traveling one way one time only... after all, the high-ups like bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri fly back and forth out of Laguardia all the time, right?
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Do they really think this is going to be effective against terrorists? Or is this just another way of saying to the public, "Look, we're doing something! And it's intrusive to your privacy so it must really work!"
How many "known" terrorists enter the US? How many of those enter on stolen passports? As far as I know, all of the Sept. 11 terrorists were: a) unknown as terrorists and b) here on valid passports and visas. This kind of program would have had no effect on preventing them from entering.
On the other hand, many people do enter the US on forged documents, particularly people from poorer countries who come here illegally, looking for work. I could see how this kind of biometric ID could help identify such illegal immigrants, if that were the goal. But I just wish people would stop trying to tie everything in to the "war on terrorism" - it distracts from the real problems that this kind of technology might be useful for.
From the article:
"As the system is envisioned, Americans still will be able to mail their passport photographs to the State Department. The department will encode them into the passport chips and add them to a database."
So, you never even get personally face scanned. They put information into the chip that lets a face scanner automatically check if your face looks like the picture on the passport... which is exactly what the humans sitting at the desk do anyways under the current system. What is this adding to our security?
Besides buzzwords.
"TV is great! Every New Year's I make a resolution to watch more TV." - Ann Coulter
I've been meaning to do this, and this is just the kick in the butt I needed... I'm going to get one of the last chip-free ones issued. I have no doubt that no matter how much reassurance the power-grubbing muckety-mucks give that this will be secure, it won't be. Remember the Diebold electronic voting machines?
Thankfully, passports are good for 10 years from their issuance, and hopefully by then they'll have the most serious bugs worked out.
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Will they scan everyone entering the US from Mexico (and Canada)? At some border places it all ready takes an hour to cross...
Do like many Mexicans do: take the short route across the Rio Grande, it only takes 30 minutes and they don't require you to be scanned...
Seriously thought, this police-state "security" with borders as tight as a prostitute's legs amounts to installing a steel door on a camping tent.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I personally don't mind extra scrutiny if it's in the name of keeping me and my family alive.
People in 1933 Germany were quite happy to put up with Hitler's new policies, and give up "some" of their civil rights, for a variety of perfectly valid reasons too...
Do you realize the government is taking the constitution apart slowly but surely?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I rest my case.
Yeah, right.
Yes, constitutional rights were violated before 9/11. However, now everytime someone wants to pass a law curtailing the public's rights, they proclaim that it is a "security measure" designed to "fight terror." It isn't like it was impossible to get obviously unconstitutional laws into place before 9/11, but now it is easy. Before, patriots said "Give me liberty, or give me death!", but now our government (I wouldn't call these people, as a group, patriots) says "Give up liberty for fear of death!"
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Crudely Drawn Games
Yes, actually. The US gov't (and Canada and EU for that matter) have shown a shocking willingness to criminalize reasonable behavior at the behest of campaign-donating big money corporations. Just look at the Skylarov case.
When the bar for criminal behavior can drop from 'robbed a bank' to 'possession of a prohibited organism' to 'wrote prohibited code' we all have to fear for our privacy because it may incriminate us.
Don't forget the 6th Admendment, both the right to a speedy trial and the right to council, are null and void if you're a suspected terrorist.
Learn something new.
Think of this utopia: The government is honest, never abuses info collected about the people,... Now would you really mind having a lot of data about yourself collected,... Collecting personal data by itself is harmless.
Ok, I'm thinking of your utopia. I'll even make it a better utopia: I'll posit that no business try to hack into the government databases for personal gain. And I'll go so far as to pretend that no government employee with access ever abuses that access for personal reasons.
Now, imagine that your utopia is The Netherlands. And imagine it's not May 15, 2004, but May 15, 1940 -- one day after The Netherlands surrendered to Nazi Germany. Note that in surrendering, The Netherlands legally turned over government control to the Nazis. Presumably that would included your database -- if the Nazis hadn't simply seized it outright.
Your utopian database contains the details of all residents, anyone who might join the Resistance, and all the Jews -- including Otto and Edith Frank and their daughters Margot and Anne.
The Frank family managed to hide from the Nazis for two years; how long do you think they'd manage in your "utopia".
Now some will say that there's little chance of Nazi invasions these day, so we should feel safe with "utopian" databases. But it doesn't take a foreign invasion to radically change a government: sometimes it just takes an election, of an Anzar or a Berlusconi or a Blair & Blunkett team or a Bush or a Howard -- or a former war criminal like Waldheim.
Remember COINTELPRO?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
With a single sentence you have exemplified both Godwin's law and Arthur Schopenhauer's thirty-second strategem. Readers can draw their own conlcusions about this conjunction of well-documented forms of noxious and invalid rhetoric with "+5 insighful" moderation.
Government survilenace can be used either to protect the safety of law abiding citizens or to deprive those citizens of their privacy and freedom. The former is a shield from violent attack on the innocent, the latter a gurantee of opression. There is hard question: How does a democratic society permit benificial surveilance and disallow oppressive surveilance. Those who condem all government monitoring out of hand (see parent post) are a threat to democracy just as are those who support government monitoring without question; both groups advocate policies which place citizens at risk.
We should have government controls in place to catch terrorists and we should insure that those controls do not become a tool for oppresion by our own government. Those serious about the defense of life and liberty will consider the complicated issue of how to achieve that. We would do well to ignore the extremeists: the tinfoil hat brigade on the left and the "my government can do no wrong" CIA fanboys on the right.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
"And it's sad people have strong reasons not to trust the government enough to willingly provide it with their personal data. ...or, maybe, are there so many wannabe criminals? ;)"
h t ml
Many of the people that are afraid of intrusive government are political dissidents who object to the actions of the people currently in power. These "security" measures usually start out aimed at foreign enemies and criminals and nearly inevitably end up being using to punish political dissidents who are vocal opponents of the people in power.
For example, there are strong indications that the Bush administration is already using their no fly list to punish antiwar activists and political dissidents. A bunch of agencies can add your name to this list at their whim. There is no protocol to find out why your name was added to the list, or legal process to get your name taken off it. There are people that are guilty of nothing more than vocal opposition to the current regime that are being turned away at the airport or being subjected to detainment and intrusive searches thanks to this list. It slows down an antiwar activist if they have to drive cross country to a protest to voice their first amendment rights. Taken to the next level, as it is in full blown police states, the same list will be checked at train and bus stations and then at check points on the highway. At that point you stop traveling. At that point its to late to realize where all these intrusive measures you thought were so benign were leading.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cassel08062003.html
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,58386,00.
You just can't trust a benevolent government because they often turn malevolent and you may not know it until its too late. The U.S. has had its share of malevolent abusers of information in Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover who used their knowledge to attack and destroy political opponents. Hoover in particular went to great lengths to destroy Martin Luther King because he was advocating equal rights for blacks and was opposing the U.S. war in Vietnam. He also apparently neglected to return a call from Hoover and no one was allowed to no answer when Hoover called. King was no criminal but Hoover treated him like one.
You simply can never trust people who have power. As the saying goes it corrupts. The people who get it want to keep it and will often do anything to that end, reference Richard Nixon, 1972. The people that have power also want to inflict pain and discomfort on anyone who opposes how they are using their power.
If the people in power decide to launch a stupid war, get a lot of people killed, and people start objecting to it, they people in power can abuse all these databases to make life hard for their political opponents and dissidents.
@de_machina
Actually the Saudi Government wanted the US troops out as well. For quite some time.
Because of the bombs in Madrid? As far as I remember there was never anybody really claimning responsiblity, it all seems to be speculation and even that claimed it was because of Spains involvement in Iraq.
Who claimed responsibility for that?
Homegrown Terrorists.
Also homegrown terrorism.
Dude, I got some news for you: The rest of the world has lived with terrorism (state and "personal") for most of history, it hasn't brought civilization to an end and bombs going up in the US won't do that either.
"Fighting" Terrorism (preventing it would be a better word) is a generational effort and not something you can solve by shoving some people some rockets up their asses. And it will never EVER go away completly.
The sooner you and the rest of the world who thinks "war on terror" is the best thing since sliced bread understand and accept this the sooner we can maybe start on the slow treck to prevent a lot of those.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.