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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
...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.
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...
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.
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 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?
"computers can nowadays compare fingerprints with ease"
Yes, but since it has to display the photo of the person in order to properly do the print match, won't we get to a point where we can't go any faster? I mean, the human eye is only so fast. The whole notion of finger-print matching just wouldn't feel right if you don't see 10,000 faces stream across the screen before finally finding the match.
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.
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.
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.
Well that's nice. What is your basis for being against fingerprinting citizens? Perhaps the Constitution and Bill of Rights, 4th Ammendment in particular, motivate your belief?
Well guess what. You won't find the word "citizen" anywhere in the 4th Ammendment or anywhere else in the Bill of Rights. They all say "people", and that isn't a synonym for "citizens". When the Constitution means citizens it says citizens.
A lot of people take for granted that our rights don't apply to non-citizens. This is simply non-factual; there are very few of our rights that only apply to citizens. The rest are for everyone.
The enemies of Democracy are
I'm pretty confident in my post. You should check my references for this.