US Visitor Fingerprints To Be (Perhaps) Stored by FBI

stair69 writes "Since 2004 many visitors to the United States have had 2 fingerprints taken under the US-VISIT scheme. Now there are new plans to extend this scheme — under the proposal all 10 fingerprints will be taken, and they will be stored permanently on the FBI's criminal fingerprint database. The fingerprints will also be made available to police forces in other countries. The scheme is due to be introduced by the end of 2008, but it will be trialled in 10 of the bigger airports initially." Of course, it is worth pointing out that given the recent change in Congress, I suspect that a number of countries will get a "bye" on this round,

Comments

Re:Nothing for me to worry about

[kabocox]

Are common law protections against unreasonable search and innocent until proven guilty going to become obsolete in the face of modern technology?

Sure, sounds great to me. Common law goes back centuries when the police didn't have any tools other than eye witness accounts. Only within maybe the last decade has it been possible to identify everyone if we registered everyone's finger prints, DNA, face, and body build. The only things that are stopping us from doing that are the Christain religious right that see any form of government issued id as "666" sign of the devil, memories of Nazi Germany and USSR Russia, and the publics general view that only criminals need to be registered. Change one of those and it would be less than a decade before we have widespread fingerprinting and DNA tracking.

There is a part of me that wonders why public schools haven't added finger printing to their student ID process. If that single step was taken, within two generations it would become socially acceptable to fingerprint and id everyone. The logic of I had to do it as a kid why shouldn't others have to do it as well can be very strong. In my state, it is currently optional to have a thumb print as part of the DL. All that needs to be changed is requiring a full set of prints for DL renewal or new DLs. We aren't quite there for DNA, but if we setup our system for fingerprints, how difficult would it be to add a string for your DNA? (Shouldn't be that hard.)

Re:Don't count on the "recent change in Congress".

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Before we let a random person into our country, we need to verify his identity to make sure he's not a criminal or terrorist.

Of course. And to do that you take his fingerprint and look for the lines crossing to make a big "T" in the middle, right? Seriously, what on earth makes you think you can reliably identify someone in this way, or that having done so, you will reliably be able to determine whether or not they have criminal intent?

Biometrics are one way to do this since documents can and will be forged.

So will biometric ID, not that it matters since the mismatch rates for most of the proposed technologies are so bad that they may well prove worse than useless in practice.

There are a lot of people who hate us, perhaps justifiably.

Indeed. The US is the only country I have actively declined to visit in recent years when I had a reasonable opportunity to do so. Would you like to guess why? (Hint: It has nothing to do with disliking the US in general or American citizens, and everyone to do with not trusting the US government and not wanting to subject myself to their draconian border controls.)

Given a tight border, there'll be (in theory) much less of a need for Draconian domestic laws.

You haven't been keeping up with who's been committing the major acts of terrorism in recent years, have you? (Hint: Many of them were citizens of the nation they attacked, and carrying genuine ID, too.)

Re:Nothing for me to worry about

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Well, following your logic then a cop might never pull over a "known" to NCIC stolen car because the person wasn't speeding or wrecklessly driving so he had no reason to stop and run the car through NCIC.

Yeah, this could totally eliminate car theft - report the car stolen and get a hsitory of where the car went. Then get pulled over 3 months later because they never cleared the theft report after recovering the car. Piss off a cop and maybe he'll stalk you through the plate scanners and just show up wherever you happen to be - won't that be fun? Want to make your kids lives hell? use your cop buddy's connections to stalk them too - cheap surveillance leads to all sorts of abuses that nobody seems to care too much about.