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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,
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.
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
> 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.
Just pray that you never have a job that actually requires you to travel anywhere. Actually it's already affecting US business and many companies are looking elsewhere. When you're an isolated third world country that no one visits and everyone trades else where will you still want to stay at home?
I always love the idea that many USians think basic human rights so important that only US citizens deserve them. Gitmo Logic.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
While I am 100% against fingerprinting CITIZENS of this country, I couldn't give a shit less if someone from outside of the US is fingerprinted.
That's extremely short-sighted. Did you miss the part about America giving the fingerprints back to the home country of the visitor? Presumably this is being done to evade whatever due-process rights exist in that country. What happens if that's reversed? I go to Canada and get fingerprinted -- Canada helpfully uploads my prints to the FBI database. My rights have been violated and I can't even complain because I "chose" to go to Canada.
This is the problem when people start rationalizing the erosion of our rights. Terrorism is just the latest excuse. Think of the War on Drugs (property forfeiture laws, expanded search powers). Think of DWIs (implied consent and compelled to give evidence against yourself). Think of the Japanese internment camps.
I'm sorry but the Constitution doesn't have a "national security" or "DWI" clause. You can't rationalize away the erosion of any rights. It's easy to support the fifth amendment until you see drunks using it to escape DWI convictions. It's easy to support the second amendment until you are held up at gunpoint. It's easy to support the first amendment until the KKK uses it.
The biggest defender of freedom stands up for the right of somebody he doesn't like to utilize those freedoms in a manner that he doesn't agree with. Anybody else is a hypocrite. And to them I say: You allowed this to happen.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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.
I cannot tell you how exhausting that is.
It is exhausting. Here I am defending OJ for publishing his book or the Westboro Baptist Church for protesting at funerals.
The basic problem though is that if it's acceptable to silence them because we don't agree with what they stand for then it becomes acceptable to silence me when I criticize Gitmo. The problem with waiving constitutional rights for certain classes of criminals (drug dealers, terrorists, DWIs, child molesters all come to mind as the favorite bogeyman) is that it makes it ok to waive them for others.
"Free speech zones", the erosion of habeas corpus, the complete disregard for the 10th Amendment.... I think the Founding Fathers would be very disappointed in the direction that we've taken the United States in the last hundred years.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.