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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,
I thought you'd've realised by now that the US has no citizens, only consumers.
Welcome to the home of the suspected criminals, land of the bold (if they dare to speak up).
How does it feel being considered a criminal by default? Heck, in my day job I teach people to treat every input with suspicion and every unknown as if it were malicious, but at least I'm speaking about data, not humans!
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
1984
Fingerprint databases are a very useful crime-fighting tool. The only objection to fingerprinting everyone (somewhere in elementary school) is the indignity of (mis)treating every citizen as a (potential) criminal.
Americans, however, are surprisingly tolerant of the government-imposed indignities — judging, for example, by their willingness to stand barefeet and beltless (belt's buckles are often metallic, you see) on the dirty floor in front of the TSA officers... Removing your footwear for inspection used to be optional (you could elect to be searched instead), but is now required since no one was objecting — except for a few freaks, like yours truly.
Fingerprinting non-citizens will not even raise the proverbial eye-brow of the nation...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I had little choice but to visit the US when I was offered the job of my dreams. Here I am, my two index fingers and thumb prints in who knows what govt databases. With my country now in the EU and my gf back home... I wonder what on earth I'm doing here, but I'm beginning to like it in a strange way.
My guess is that this is the return favor for the US. After all, I think it would be rather hard to get it past the constitution to fingerprint all US citizens. But, after all, the info is 'shared freely', so I take the prints of your subjects, you take those of mine, and everyone's happy.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If it's the Dems, I'm thoroughly disappointed - I thought the idea was to *reverse* the damage done by the Republican party, not add to it.
Well, yes, but they aren't simply going to undo everything, as National Security is still a major issue that the Dems cannot afford to appear weak on. They won largely because the Reps were doing such a bad job of actually executing on Security. The degree to which the objections both of the Dems and the voters were based on the Reps leading us towards a police state is debateable but I'd say limited, especially among the elected officials. The "damage" is stupid, failed policies, not evil anti-Democratic policies. So the Dems still want to have an effective and most likely invasive National Security policy, and the question is: Are they in fact any smarter than the Reps in terms of making an actual effective working policy?
My educated guess: No.
The enemies of Democracy are
Now, now, that's not true. There are indeed US citizens. All you need is enough money and you're still treated fairly.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And I've spent more than a year living there. However, I'll be damned if I'll set foot in a country that brands me as a criminal the instant I step off the plane. It's no surprise the RIAA/MPAA comes from the same place... It's bad enough with the ridiculous video branding me when I just bought the damn movie.
Paranoia is nice under some circumstances, but this is just ridiculous. Like they actually think it'll do any good? It'll be really nice to know who blew up WTC v2.0 after the fact, yeah...
As it is now, I avoid travelling to the US -- No, I don't appear or sound middle eastern -- I just don't like the way things are headed south of the border, and I will not spend a single tourist dollar in a country that will illegally deport a fellow Canadian citizen to be tortured in Syria for a year.
:-) I tend to lean right -- but this police state crap has got to stop.)
At the moment, I will travel on business -- but if they want my fingerprints for a criminal database -- then I will not travel to the US at all. I will not consent to being fingerprinted for criminal database purposes just because I'm on a business trip.
(And I'm not one of the left leaning bleeding heart liberal types
Ian Ameline
It's bad enough that the FBI might want to store your prints permanently in a criminal database without cause, but to then share that information with who knows how many other countries?
How is any individual supposed to protect themselves when you can't even keep track of who has your fingerprints?
> My fingerprints are in at least one government database
> (for non-criminal reasons). It doesn't bother me.
> When I decide to rob banks or kill people, then I'll be worried.
Remember that fingerprints in the database are stored as encoded strings describing the location of some branching points in the ridge patterns. Essentially a hash function.
Note that the data on which the hash is constructed is subject to scaling and rotation of the captured image. Note that selection of the points is hard in some people's patterns (because there may be unusually many branch points.
Now note that we are addding a very large amount of new prints to be processed, of which a much lower proportion will ever be needed than in the previous population of the database. There will be extreme pressure to do this quickly and cheaply with less-skilled operators. This will lead to many false matches.
We already have many cases of false matches leading to arrest of innocent people when fingerprint data is shared between FBI and Interpol (made worse by some differences in technical standards between different police organizations. And because most of the victims of these false positives will not be US voters, fixing the problems will not be a high priority.
If you really believe that mass processing of huge fingerprint databases is feasible with acceptably low error rates, you should advocate that a full set of prints for the FBI database should be taken with every US driver's license application. This would have enormous benefits if every fingerprint found at a crime scene could easily be matched. By raising the chance of solving crimes by an order of magnitude, it would create an enormous incentive for people not to commit crimes. But I don't know anyone who trusts the system enough to want this to be done.
And yet, if the ones implementing this scheme were the UK, or Germany, or France, or Japan, fingerprinting all visitors including Americans... would you feel like you're been treated like a good-intentioned tourist, or like a potential criminal?
Actually, USians on the run from the law are MORE likely to go to Brazil. Brazil has strong protections regarding extradition. While naturalized citizens can be deported, Brazil will actually make the US go through some sort of due process before they ship them off.
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I travel from Europe to the US on a regular basis (once a month) for work. It's getting worse and worse. They track everything about you. I get held up when trying to enter. They're asking me more and more pointless questions. Like where do you work, what kind of work do you do, when will you going back, when was the last time you visited, where do you stay. I can't book any internal US flights from Europe anymore, since they can't verify my European credit card anymore (this started last month). Welcome to the US, land of the guilty until proven innocent.
At some point I'm not going to put up with this Bullcrap anymore. I'm just going to stay in Europe. And you can forget about my business.
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
FWIW, I don't really see fingerprints as "my privacy". You leave the damned things everywhere, your fingerprints are roughly equivalent to your face, its a personally identifiable image. So now we are asking guests of this country if we can take a different type of picture.
You leave DNA everywhere too. Every time you shed a hair, every time you blow your nose, every time you spit, sneeze, sweat or pick your nose. Your garbage bags waiting out by the curb are probably full of DNA that you have "discarded" and could in theory be taken by the police. Does this mean the Government should build a DNA database of all citizens -- even those who haven't been convicted of anything?
Are common law protections against unreasonable search and innocent until proven guilty going to become obsolete in the face of modern technology? I for one do not welcome our CSI overlords.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The average [inser_country_here] Citizen is innoent too, you know. And yet we are seen as a potential criminal when entering the U.S. (more so if we are Latin American, African or Middle-Eastern).
Well, maybe this time they will integrate databases and realize, for the 6th year, that I am not a US Citizen. Maybe they will stop sending me Jury Duty requests and will also stop sending me Elections related ads and documents, including requests for me to register to vote, which I can't because I am not a citizen.
"Of course, it is worth pointing out that given the recent change in Congress,"
Yeah, a whopping 5% of seats actually changed hands! Cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria!
95% of the people who voted this stuff into place to begin with are still there. Don't expect anything to change.
Sure, sounds great to me. Common law goes back centuries when the police didn't have any tools other than eye witness accounts.
And the common law evolved because of abuses by those same authorities. What makes you think that DNA and fingerprints can't be abused? I don't think technology has changed the fact that we ought to regard the Government with suspicion.
Change one of those and it would be less than a decade before we have widespread fingerprinting and DNA tracking.
And why is that a good thing? You do realize that the overwhelming majority of criminals are caught because they screw up, right? It doesn't take magical CSI work to solve most crimes. Talk to any police officer. The cops aren't that much smarter then you or I. The criminals tend to be idiots. You have to ask yourself why the Government needs a database of fingerprints and DNA.
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.
And that's the day that my kids become home schooled. You aren't making a compelling argument for why we should stand for this.
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.)
And again, why should we do this exactly?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
All of which is lovely, until someone makes a mistake.
And then your life is shattered if it's your fingerprint they mismatched.
Do you think your government would ever make such a mistake?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Some might argue you need to transit through American airports to get to various destinations (i.e. Spain => South America), but that's a very rare case and you can usually use Canada as a transit point.
You can't take the sky from me...
"I don't think he has the right to be looking at me"
This is where I think you've gone too far.
The current standard used to judge this sort of thing usually is "how much of an intrusion is this upon the innocent?"
If something is considered to not be an intrusion, it's acceptable. If it is one, than it's usually not.
A cop LOOKING AT YOU is not an intrusion. You don't even realize it's happening. And the idea that you group your license plate number in the same category as your DNA and Fingerprints tells me that you're in the fringe here. Driving is a privilege. If you don't want to drive around with a personally identifiable number plainly visible for all to see, then you can always walk, ride a bicycle, take a taxi or use public transportation. But if you're going to drive, you just have to accept the fact that you will be given a tracking cookie that is publicly readable.
However, I do think that the license-plate-reading device is not necessarily kosher. It can be misused. Let's say it scans all plates for drivers with a DUI history or just a penchant for speeding, and the cop uses that info to follow you waiting for that twitchy foot to push you above the magic number. This is profiling, and this is wrong. It is an intrusion to be followed by a cop because of your past choices. All the usual "intrusion" arguments apply here, including the fact that it might be a wife/girlfriend/etc borrowing your car.
But if it scans the plates and throws up a "This car is stolen!," or a "This guy has a warrant!" alarm, that's a different issue. There is no intrusion. People not currently enaged in breaking--or wanted by--the law are filtered thru, never making it to the officers screen, and the ones that are get tagged.
I don't know what it has to do with the "recent change in Congress", but I do know that the current US-VISIT fingerprinting scheme doesn't apply to Canadians, at least not yet.
I'm a Canadian citizen, and passed through the U.S. on my way to Canada a couple of months ago. When I saw this fingerprinting crap going on I was just about ready to turn around and get straight back on the plane to Japan, but then I found out that Canadians were not required to submit to this intrusion. (Unfortunately, we do still have to stand in the endless immigration queue while everyone else gets fingerprinted.)
It made me sad, really. It's certainly the last time I'm booking a flight that happens to stop in the U.S.; and I don't think I'll be spending a lot of holiday time there either, not until after the current wave of paranoia passes. I'm as pro-American as any Canadian you're likely to meet -- but who the hell needs to be treated like a criminal just for passing through a freaking airport in your country? Your government sure is doing a good job of alienating even your closest friends.