British Airport Will Require Fingerprints From Domestic Passengers

ProfBooty brings us a story about England's Heathrow airport, which will begin fingerprinting passengers on its domestic flights later this month. Airport executives claim that the data will be stored for no longer than 24 hours, and will not be shared with law enforcement. We've previously discussed airport fingerprinting measures in the United States and Japan. Quoting: "All four million domestic passengers who will pass through Terminal 5 annually after it opens on March 27 will have four fingerprints taken, as well as being photographed, when they check in. To ensure the passenger boarding the aircraft is the same person, the fingerprinting process will be repeated just before they board the aircraft and the photograph will be compared with their face. Dr Gus Hosein, of the London School of Economics, an expert on the impact on technology on civil liberties, is one of the scheme's strongest critics. He said: 'There is no other country in the world that requires passengers travelling on internal flights to be fingerprinted. BAA says the fingerprint data will be destroyed, but the records of who has travelled within the country will not be, and it will provide a rich source of data for the police and intelligence agencies.'"

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Re:The Point is ...

[Archtech]

To no one's surprise, it was Jefferson.

"When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty".
- Thomas Jefferson

But then, if Jefferson were alive today he would already be in Guantanamo. Just check out some of the other things he said.

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first".

"...were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter".

"I hope we shall... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country".

"The strongest reason for the People to retain the Right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government".

"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine".

"Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor".

"Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government".

"Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny".

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent".

And, perhaps most relevant of all today:

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free...it expects what never was and never will be".