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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.'"
Really? The terrorists have won? I guess Al Qaeda will be claiming victory and going home any day now. I'm no fan of intrusive governments, searches without warrants, etc, but Al Qaeda and their affiliates don't give a DAMN what laws we pass. They want us destroyed and will fight until, "the flag of Islam flies over the White House," as more than one senior leader has put it. They don't care how long it takes, they don't care how many of them are killed, and they certainly don't care if a few Americans or Brits have their rights infringed in the process. This is a war to the death, and we're not taking it very seriously. Bin Laden even said that he had to do 9/11 because we didn't listen to any of the previous attacks. Each one was bigger than anything they did before, and now they're working on nukes. They've warned us each time they were going to attack, but no one cared. They've warned us they're going to use nukes. But hey, since some laws requiring travelers use fingerprints was passed, I'm sure they'll abandon those plans. They already won.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
to be honest, i couldn't care less if they take my fingerprint, embed me with a chip, monitor my phone calls, or whatever. As long as it doesn't slow all my life processes down, in this case, me checking in, getting on the plane, etc.. i dont care.
It should only matter to you if you have something to hide/did something wrong.
If you want stop them from doing this, forget about protests and demonstations, that won't get you anywhere. People have been having things like anti-war protests for decades, where has it gotten us? The government and media saying that the war is unpopular. The sentiment is not working very well at the moment. Write your rep. or senator, they're the people with the only real power to do anything in a republic (this speaking from the USA sense anyway).
-Tony