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Japan to Start Fingerprinting Foreign Travelers

Posted by Zonk on from the welcome-to-the-country-you-get-to-leave-a-piece-behind dept.

rabiddeity writes "If you're planning to visit Japan sometime in the near future, you should be aware of the welcome you'll get. Last year, Japan's parliament passed a measure requiring foreigners to submit their fingerprints when entering the country. The measures, which apply to all foreigners over 16 regardless of visa status, take effect tomorrow. The worst part: the fingerprints are stored in a national database for an "unspecified time", and will be made available to both domestic police and foreign governments."

4 of 520 comments (clear)

  1. Re:New Travel Destination by wish+bot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Welcome to the rest of the world's dilemma if we want to even transit through the USA. I've avoided it for the past...3, 4(?) years exactly for this reason. I wouldn't be surprised if Japan is doing this kind of as a big 'FU' to the States.

    --
    lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
  2. Shared? by schwit1 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    So the Japanese fingerprint the Americans entering there and the US fingerprints the Japanese coming here, and then sharing is permitted. So in reality each government is getting access to its citizens fingerprints without violating any privacy laws.


    Am I supposed to just accept that this violation-by-proxy is legal?

  3. The US has been doing this for a while now. by NimbleSquirrel · · Score: 5, Insightful
    How exactly is this different to what the US does to foreign visitors?

    When the US started to fingerprint foreign travellers, a whole bunch of countries threatened to do that to visting US citizens. It is nice to see Japan follow through with their threat, albeit a few years later (although they are not just focussing on US citizens). I can see a bunch of Americans getting really upset about this and declaring they'll never travel to Japan, but what the Japanese Government are doing is really no different than what the US Government is doing to everyone else.

    Personally I don't like being treated as a criminal. However, as much as I could complain about it, it won't be stopping me from travelling.

  4. Re:New Travel Destination by likes2comment · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Brazil started doing this when the US announced it was doing it to all visitors a couple of years ago. It surprised me to see that it has taken other countries so long to start doing this too. What goes around comes around. We do it to the world, then the world will do it to us.

    This also applies to torture and other interogation techniques like "water boarding" for captured soldiers. In the future our military personal should expect to have the same treatment that we are giving others with water boarding, etc.