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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 am a US citizen.
(or am I just fooling myself)
Fricken scary.
I guess they just haven't learned the difference between quantity of information, and its overall quality. They're dealing with a very low signal-to-noise ratio when 'plans' like this are implemented, and that in itself will become a major impediment to dealing with any true threats. I can't help but wonder if this is coming from the Democrats or the Republicans. 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.
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
...to never ever vistit the 'land of the free'. I wouldn't do it currently because of all 'security' measures allready in place. But it's reassuring to find out I was right about that.
What the heck is that supposed to mean? What countries? And why? And, for that matter, how is congress going to get involved at that level of detail...especially since they're already claiming they can't even do anything to stop Bush from escalating the war, despite the fact that by most accounts they were elected to do just that?
Was part of this remark clipped off (note the trailing comma) or am I missing some interpretation that is less senseless than the obvious?
--MarkusQ
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 wonder how many other countries will follow suit, that is, fingerprint visitors from the US and store their fingerprints and personal data in their criminal database. Brasil already fingerprints and photographs US citizens (and only US citizens) visiting Brasil...
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
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.
If this goes ahead, before visiting the USA I want to know:
1) What is the chance of a false positive with this system? i.e. what is the chance that it might think I am someone they are looking for?
2) What is the procedure then for someone who is not an American citizen?
I can imagine what hell you might go through if this system identifies you as a wanted terrorist - not a chance I want to take, even if the odds of it happening are very low.
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?
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Just use a belt sander with 80 grit paper on it.
:)
Turn it on, place fingers on sand paper, hold as long as you can stand it. Repeat until prints are gone. No problem.
Finger prints are only 1/32 of an in deep. It is dead skin and serves no real purpose. I started sanding mine off several years ago when the state went to mandatory fingerprinting to get a drivers license. It is easy and the look on the persons face when you say "I don't have finger prints!" is just something else.
The other thing you can do is to cover the tips of your fingers with super glue. It works quite well and does not come off for some time.
> 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.
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.
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).
In some ways, this shift from 2 fingerprintes taken, to all 10, is a relief. Previously, terrorists were forced to only use 4 fingers on each hand, in a sort of 'pinky out' high tea fashion (although with their pointing finger, not pinky). This resulted in hazardous RSI conditions which crippled the more active terrorists. For those skeptics reading this, try just hacking into an NSA account, picking a lock, or even spinning a safe combination dial without using your pointing fingers.
Feel the pain? There you have it, RSI. Now, under this new scheme, at least the terrorists can relax and use all 10 fingers, knowing there is no more false security in those missing 8 records to enjoy. And the US will benefit-- I anticipate that there will be no more class action suits against the US to deal with the former health crisis due to 2-finger exception techniques.
That said, as a taxpayer I assume the gathering of all 10, instead of just 2, will only incur a moderate 5x cost in upgrading airports and training personel. A bargain!
A.
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.
...some countries will get a bye this round
Yes, likely a "good bye" from all their citizens who are already ticked off enough at the US. Certainly I've noticed a huge drop in the number of scientific conferences held in the US. Partly because the visa rules prevent - or at least pose severe problems - for some of those attending and partly because there is a noticeable minority of people who now refuse to travel to the US because of the fingerprinting. I can only imagine that this will swell their ranks.
I think that's the most disturbing part for me. Imagine getting picked up when landing in London because you were accidentally tagged as a "money launderer" by the Spanish. It would probably take weeks to get sorted out. In the mean time you could kiss your job good-bye. On top of that with so many databases sharing so much information, you might never be really "cleared." You might land in the US again and get detained for days while they sort out the fact that the Spanish tagged you as a "money launderer," even though it was fixed on the British copy of the Spanish database.
I saw a news item recently about a girl who'd been held for 30 days for having condoms full of flour, which airport official claimed were drugs. (Apparently filling condoms with flour is how the girls at her school make stress releaving squeezies - odd but eccentricity is not a crime). She spent 30 days in jail while substance was re-tested, only to discover it was, in fact, flour.
Another example is the US no-fly list. It has literally cost people their livelihoods when they were no longer able to fly. The worst part is they use really poor matching techniques like name matches - so anyone with certain names were not able to board airplanes! Another man interviewed by the Daily Show was labeled as Saddam Huessein's *dead* son, whose age would have required Saddam to have sired him at the age of 11!.
Here's another delicious example. People who buy large boats that were siezed as part of drug raids often get boarded by the coast guard. The identification number on the ship is almost impossible to change, and the coast guard decides to board the ship based on the registration number. Even though the original owner was arrested and his property was siezed.
Is this really a good idea?
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
A "bye" in this context means "they will be excluded from the requirements." So, if you're flying from certain countries and you're a citizen of that country—e.g. Great Britain—you might not have to give a full print set, but if you're from others, you will. It's sense #1 in this definition.
Program Intellivision!
All these paranoid comments about privacy and Big Brother assumes that the government is actually organized enough to actually do handle all this information. I'd be more worried about the profiteers coming forward to "contract" the management of all this than the government itself.
In the mean time, just relax and do what I do: dip your finger tips into sulfuric acid. It doesn't seem tohave anny negattttive effectsss at alll.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
I'm pretty confident in my post. You should check my references for this.