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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.'"
And Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
What the hell is going on these last few years?! Ever since some wackos killed less people than die from AIDS in a day the US, UK, and AU seem hell bent racing each other to see who can become China first! It's time to face the fact: the terrorists have won. Not flamebait, just a sober realization.
Shh.
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"The company said the move had been necessitated by the design of Terminal 5, where international and domestic passengers share the same lounges and public areas after they have checked in. "
Nothing to add here.
They're not waiting for Terminal 5, I was photographed and fingerprinted like a criminal today on my way home from a meeting in Hamburg, via Heathrow Terminal 1. I wasn't happy, why should I as a UK passport holder have my fingerprints taken? It's a police state.
The measures we go through to stop terrorism have reached such a point of insanity that I am simply blown away. The way to react to a tiny handful of deaths has been so out of proportion to the threat, that I wake up thankful every single day that US Constitution provides at least some (admittedly constantly weakening) safeguards against democracy.
This latest scheme in Britain is just one more example of the utter insanity of the masses and their complete and utter inability to make rational decisions. You are radically more likely to be killed by your pool or a car than you are to be struck down by a terrorist. Despite this, we go through insane, fanatical, and expensive measures to prevent one of the rarest ways to die in a western democracy. Death through airplane exploded by terrorist rates somewhere near the absolute bottom in terms of likely ways to die... well below being struck down by lightening.
Honestly, I think that we have seen why democracies don't work. If we continue down this utterly insane path spending more and more resources to defend utterly insignificant attacks with wildly out of proportion, expensive, AND a costly to civil liberties methods, we might actually succeed where terrorist always fail. Terrorist in the west always fail to cause any real significant or costly damage. Even 9/11 was a drop in the bucket next to auto accident, cancer, heart attacks, or hurricanes. Yet, we treat a tragedy that can normally be shrugged off without flinching in such a violent way that we cause incalculable harm to ourselves. The money and lives lost in the response to 9/11 or the London bombings make the actual attacks like like pock change.
It is like getting a pin prick on your finger tip and responding by chopping your own arm off. Uh, yeah, you can't get pin pricked again... but you chopped off your fucking arm.
As much as I want to blame the politicians/corporations/neo-cons/fill-in-evil-entity-of-choice-here, the real problem is democracy. A system that changes itself in response to the utterly stupid and irrational emotions of the masses dooms itself. What is the alternative? The hell of I know. I thought that the US constitution offers up a good alternative to democracy as it seems to be written in pretty clear and absolute language. Despite this, the US has reverted to democracy in its most vile of forms. It might not be as far gone as Britain, but it is desperately trying. I honestly don't know the answer You can't ignore the irrational masses as you will fall into the trap of tyranny. That said, if you listen to the stupid cows, you get this crap, which is tyranny in another form.
"Airport executives claim that the data will be stored for no longer than 24 hours, and will not be shared with law enforcement."
Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
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A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
>"Then why are you doing it?"
It's a way of gently easing the metaphorical butt-cheeks of the British public apart. It's what they did with Traffic cameras. First it was just about license plate data for the congestion charge, and we were all assured that it wouldn't capture images of faces or be used by the police ... Fast Forward a year or two, and faces are captured and the police have full unfettered access - to fight terrorism and organised crime ... and petty crime ... and political dissenters ...
They want to have their own way with you, so they open you up with a finger, apply a little lurication and allow you to fully relax before they bring out the truncheon.
Give it a year or so and our collective sphincters will have unclenched and our glorious overlords will tell us they need the data to protect us (coz they really love us) and it'll all be added into our permanent files.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
The UK government has a long and rich history of allowing the police and secret service to get away with pretty much anything they like. What you get if it leaks is some blip in the press, that takes a few days and then things will progress as before.
:-).
You make take it as significant that since New Labour came to power there has been a sharp decline in people being ejected from their posts for abject failure, even the guy responsible for the process failures that led to the loss of 2 CDs with the details of several million people on did not actually lose his job after he "resigned", he now works in a much cushier position at Cabinet Office. Yes, that's right, in principle a promotion. That's a subtle hint of how New Labour thinks about privacy.
It follows thus that what Heathrow management says and what really will happen is VERY likely to be different, or it will be a weasel argument as "WE only keep it 24h, but it's not our fault the police takes a copy at 12h and we don't know what they do with it". I hope they have at least the intelligence to store the fingerprints as a hash, but given the predicted leak I am willing to bet that it's full imagery.
And in that case, imagine what may be on the next CDs (sorry DVDs - fingerprints need space) that will be lost? Exactly, the one bit of data you normally control because you have it physically on you, and the one aspect you can't change other than with judicious use of a sharp knife or strong acid (apparently, never felt the need for it myself
I will avoid any route going through terminal 5. What's more, as that is a BA terminal it's a good argument to avoid flying BA altogether - from what I've heard (since the luggage debacle) that's not a bad idea anyway.
Or investigate fake fingers..
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