Slashdot Mirror
Biometrics at the Statue of Liberty
gurps_npc writes "There is an interesting CNN article about the Statue of Liberty finally opening again (it was closed since 9/11 for security reasons).
They have increased security to 'airport levels', and offer lockers for people to rent, partly to keep those incredibly dangerous objects like swiss army knives away from the fragile Statue of Liberty. But instead of keys, the lockers use fingerprint readers to open and close (approximately one reader for every 50 lockers)." The article notes that the design was dictated by the Transportation Security Administration.
would any sufficiently swirly object work?
a knuckle for example?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
"What no one seemed to notice was the ever widening gap between the government and the people...And it became always wider...
...or, rather, provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway...
... by the machinations of the 'national enemies' without and within) and the government's 'responses' to them, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us...
...
"The whole process of this disconnect coming into being was built around diversion...
"Nazism gave us some other dreadful, fundamental things to think about
"Nazism kept us so busy with continuous changes, accusations and 'crises' and so fascinated
"Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted', that unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures' must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing...
"Each act curtailing freedom... is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join you in resisting somehow...
"You don't want to act, or even talk, alone... you don't want to 'go out of your way to make trouble' or be 'unpatriotic'...But the one great shocking
occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes...
"That's the difficulty. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring: the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit (which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms) is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.
"You have accepted things you would not have accepted five years ago, a year ago, things your father... could never have imagined."
Source: They Thought They Were Free, The Germans, 1938-45 (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1955)
__________________________________
"We will not wait as our enemies gather strength against us. In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action, and this nation will act." G.W.Bush, West Point, June 2002
"In this new world, declarations of war serve no purpose. Our enemies must be defeated before they can harm us. I will never declare war, but will take action!" Adolph Hitler, June 1940
"Not too many people will be crying in their beer if there are more detentions, more stops and more profiling. There will be a groundswell of public opinion to banish civil rights," Peter Kirsanow, Bush's controversial appointee the U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights
"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people, and the West in general, into an unbearable hell and a choking life."
Osama bin Laden, October, 2001
As long as they don't connect your fingerprint to your name on site, then I don't mind being checked against a terrorist database. I'm not a terrorist. If they stored my fingerprint afterwards and kept it connected to my name, then yes, of course I'd be against it, but I HIGHLY doubt this happens.
I'm glad they've finally reopened the monument. I've good memories of it. In fact, the last time I was inside a woman, I was visiting the Statue of Liberty.
...stolen from Woody Allen...
--
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Are they afraid that someone is going to hijack the statue and fly it into a building?
Yout maniacs! You blew it up! Damn you! God damn you all to Hell!
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Read the damn article before posting it.
The article discusses other end-user fingerprinting applications, and mentions the US-VISIT program where every terrorist, uh, foreigner entering the United States will get fingerprinted and the fingerprints of THAT scan will be run against the FBI database.
The fingerprints taken to access lockers at the Statue of Liberty are NOT run against the FBI database.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
I heard the statue of Liberty would be replaced by Dick Cheney with a barrel of oil under one arm and a sack of cash raised above his head with the other.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Somewhat off-topic, but at the moment, the Slashdot front page offers a slightly different version of this story summary (even after hitting Refresh). In fact, the story even disappeared from the front page for a moment, and I thought it was destined to be a ghost article.
Here's the info, for posterity, with differences in bold.
Your Rights Online: Statue of Liberty Checks Fingerprints Against FBI Watchlist
Posted by michael on Thu Aug 12, '04 11:13 AM
from the oh-the-irony dept.
gurps_npc writes "There is an interesting CNN article about the Statue of Liberty finally opening again (it was closed since 9/11 for security reasons). They have increased security to 'airport levels', and offer lockers for people to rent, partly to keep those incredibly dangerous objects like swiss army knives away from the fragile Statue of Liberty. But instead of keys, the lockers use fingerprint readers to open and close (approximately one reader for every 50 lockers). The privacy violation is of course that the lockers ALSO check your fingerprints against the FBI Terrorist Watch List. The article does not mention if any record of the finger print is kept by the FBI if it does not match. It also does not mention if the machine themselves keep a record of your fingerprint after you recover your stuff."
Note that the editorial comment about the TSA design requirement wasn't in the original, either.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
For those that don't get the stupid part of this let me explain. If you were a terrorist casing the statue of liberty for a future attack and noticed the lockers required fingerprint scans would you use one? Even if you didn't know they'd be checking them against the FBI database you'd have to be one seriously stupid terrorist to not realize the possibility exists and it could blow your cover. They'll probably find a random minor criminal or two and arrest them with some trumped up charges to make it sound/look like these are helping fight the war on terror.
Course the reality is they're not helping any, they're just further eroding what little privacy we have left and the terrorists will just avoid them. And yes I realize we're not guaranteed privacy in public places but running fingerprints without notice (on a regular basis, not just when you suspect someone of a crime) is a bit beyond the erosion of privacy we expect. It's just surreal, I don't think even Orwell thought things would get this silly.
During a recent vacation to Universal Studios in Florida I had a chance to use what I assume are the same type of lockers. It worked reasonably well for me, but the person I was with had a lot of trouble getting it to read her fingerprint. There was also one reader that was in direct sunlight during part of the day, and would not read anyones fingerprint during that time.
There is one computer with a fingerprint reader and a touch screen for a bank of lockers. When renting the locker you had to put your finger on the reader twice. Once the computer had two reads that matched for you, it would give you a locker number, you put your stuff in it and push the button to lock it. When you come back you have to remember your locker number and enter that on a touch screen, then present your finger to the reader again. When your fingerprint matches, the system unlocks your locker and you get your stuff.
There is a Gift Shop located across from the lockers where they can purchase a package of Gummi Bears to bypass the biometric locks on the lockers.1 5254&tid=172
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/25/13
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Earlier this week infact I visited the statue. Let me just say that security was incredibly tight, even moreso than at airports. To take the boat over to the island you first had to go through the standard metal detector/xray as you would at any airport. Next, if you wanted to get into the statue (and had a ticket to do so), you had to put all backpacks and large purses into one of these neat lockers. And after that, you went through a rather interesting machine that "sniffs" you for explosive materials and then go through another metal detector/xray. And even after all that security, you can only walk through the statue (actually the pedestal) while being watched and guided by a park ranger as well as several national park security gaurds. All and all it felt a bit like overkill, but considering that the statue is probably one of the most important symbols of America, it makes sense to so heavily gaurd it.
Excuse me? How is this a privacy *violation*? You'd have to choose to voluntarily provide a fingerprint in a public place, and that's a violation? If I were standing on a street corner asking people to volunteer to have their fingerprints matched to the FBI database, would that be a privacy violation as well?
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Now in its early stages, the program, known as US-VISIT, calls for visitors to go through biometric scans to ensure that they are who their visa or passport says they are. Passports issued by the United States and other countries are getting new chips that will have facial-recognition data, and other biometrics might be added.
Read the article: if visitors to the US are being connected to their names in this way, how long do you think it will be before visitors to the statue of liberty are connected to their names? We're dealing with a slippery slope here. There're no security measures to prevent this data from being stored or used in inappropriate ways.
What would I like? A guarentee that these prints are deleted at the end of the day, or after check out, or something like that. I doubt anybody wants or could see a reason for permanent records of this sort. (Unless of course you're 'president' dubya, in which case 1984 is looking like paradise)
and this is an entirely off topic discussion to have, but you said "I'm not a terrorist": what the heck is a terrorist, then? What does the database really have in it? Are these people that have been legally convicted of a terrorist crime (okay), or are these 'suspects'? The US definition of 'suspect' is, err, a little suspect these days
okay, /pun
I don't see a problem with using this as a way to deter that.
And this is exactly what the *good* "citizens" of our fine country are supposed to say. "I have nothing to hide please take my finger prints."
I say the hell with that. Just because we have nothing to hide does not mean that we should happily fork over our identities.
As far as it being a useful technology. Yes, it's a fantastic overuse of a technology. I always felt that a key or a temporary code worked better. Perhaps I am just old-fashioned that way probably just paranoid.
The government wants us to be paranoid over terrorists to detract from being paranoid about them. I'm not fooled.
I was once going to a client's data center at Globix. I was carrying a particularly nifty, but heavy, item that I found on the streets of Chinatown (an old Commodore monitor-- which, as I surmised, was still in working order!). Because I was holding this bulky object, I fumbled a bit as I pressed my finger to the scanner.
I was still let in.
So I went in, put the monitor down, and came back out to experiment. I tried another finger. It worked... I tried a knuckle. It worked...
Finally, I held my hair (long hair) back, leaned down, and gently pressed the tip of my NOSE to the scanner plate.
It worked.
Moral of the story: Biometric security is sometimes just so much heehaw, and it does malfunction (and yields false-positives as well as false-negatives).
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
How many times do people visit the SoL? Once? Twice? Three times a Lady?
How are they going to get used to them? Unless, of course, these lockers will eventually be installed everywhere...(cue theater organ)
I'm still surprised that the morons who changed French Fries to 'Freedom Fries' haven't tried to get the SoL taken down and shipped back to France - after all, 'They are against us'.
...the statue is probably one of the most important symbols of America... :)
Which reminds me of a great point I used to pull out when the whole France/Freedom Fries thing was going on. If you're that mad at them then give their damn statue back!
Shh.
Overdramtic? I am not so sure about that.
But I have to agree with the poster who speaks about using boxes to change things.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Hitler was actually voted in.
Hitler was not elected; he was appointed to the seat of Chancellor in 1933 by Hindenburg to whom Hitler had lost the presidential election to in 1932. He managed to convince Hindenburg to merge the seats of the Chancellor and President into one upon the death of Hindenburg.
Hitler became effective fuhrer after the Reichstag fire in 1933 when he claimed emergency powers that effectively quashed whilst not exactly outlawing political dissent. Strangely enough the merger of Chancellor and President was then approved by referrendum in 1934.
You are free to draw your own parallels if you wish.
The ways of gods are mysteriously indistinguishable from chance.
These quotes are taken slightly out of context:
9 04n_clintons
... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
"We can't be too concerned with protecting the rights of ordinary Americans." - Bill Clinton.
Actually, the quote is:
President William J. Clinton: "We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles...that we are unable to think about reality." USA Today, March 11, 1993
Still an unattractive quote to a lot of folks, but when you stick a period in the middle of that sentence, its meaning changes a bit, no?
Also:
"We're going to take some things away from you, for the common good." - Hillary Clinton, very recently.
Yes, she said it. But what was she talking about, and who was she talking to? Was she talking about freedom? Rights? Liberties? Noooo... tax dollars.
Here it is in a slightly broader context:
From:
http://www.sfexaminer.com/article/index.cfm/i/062
Headlining an appearance with other Democratic women senators on behalf of Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is up for re-election this year, Hillary Clinton told several hundred supporters -- some of whom had ponied up as much as $10,000 to attend -- to expect to lose some of the tax cuts passed by President Bush if Democrats win the White House and control of Congress.
"Many of you are well enough off that
There is a big difference between taking away tax cuts from the wealthy, and taking away all American's civil liberties.
Be wary of context when you see a quote, folks.