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Homeland Security To Scan Citizens Exiting US

Posted by timothy on from the subtle-messages dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The US Department of Homeland Security is set to kickstart a controversial new pilot to scan the fingerprints of travellers departing the United States. From June, US Customs and Border Patrol will take a fingerprint scan of travellers exiting the United States from Detroit, while the US Transport Security Administration will take fingerprint scans of international travellers exiting the United States from Atlanta. The controversial plan to scan outgoing passengers — including US citizens — was allegedly hatched under the Bush Administration. An official has said it will be used in part to crack down on the US population of illegal immigrants."

33 of 676 comments (clear)

  1. Idiocy by vux984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "An official has said it will be used in part to crack down on the US population of illegal immigrants"

    Why not just let them leave? And bar them when they try to come back. What is the point of catching someone you don't want in the country when they are leaving it??

    1. Re:Idiocy by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And so is the continual expansion of State power, particularly at the federal level, in the name of "security". I'd argue that a lot of people are letting their fear of immigrants drive them right into that.

    2. Re:Idiocy by Wrath0fb0b · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not a matter of xenophobia. For most people anyway. Illegal immigration is a very real social and economic problem.

      I'd like to second this. I'm not xenophobic -- I support allowing a large number of legal immigrants into the country each year under fairly generous terms. I oppose all forms of ethnic quotas and other restrictive immigration policies. I support giving legal immigrants nearly full access to the benefits of citizenship as soon as they arrive and additional services (if they want) to help them in adjusting to a different country. Hopefully, this is enough to convince people that I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, anti-immigrant.

      On the other hand, I am a firm believer in the need to enforce the law with regards to illegal immigrants -- deport them and bar them from reentry. These positions aren't contradictory and, in fact, I see them as complementary -- by increasing legal immigration and throwing out all the illegal immigrants, we will be rewarding those honest people that follow the rules instead of those that decide that they have the right to break the law to get what they want. Those are the kind of people that we ought to be allowing to immigrate. The incentives in our current system are perversely the opposite of this -- it punishes those that want to follow the rules with onerous waits and arbitrary terms while rewarding those that skip in line with amnesty and "safe haven". It's ludicrous, and I blame both the GOP for stymieing legal immigration and the Dems for stymieing systematic attempts to identify and deport illegals and punish unscrupulous employers (only the really negligent, of course -- not every contractor that accepts a forged SSN deserves to get canned, but the ones that intentionally look the other way certainly do).

      Such a partisan football is made out of what I thought was just common sense -- it's depressing really. I can't understand it -- I just can't. It's some sort of collective insanity we've entered in this country.

    3. Re:Idiocy by cyberprophet · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The people who allegedly did the 9-11 attacks had brown skin and are rather indistinguishable from the brown-skinned people south of the U.S border.

      Are you really suggesting that you can't tell the difference between someone from Central America and someone from the Middle East?

    4. Re:Idiocy by Wrath0fb0b · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How about the contractors who accept forged SSNs and then proceed to duly withhold and file all payroll related taxes?

      Don't care. They knowingly accepted a forged SSN and should be punished for violating a fairly simple and straightforward law. Yes, it's nice that they paid taxes, but my main concern with illegal immigration is not taxes -- it's basic fairness.

      It is unfair to the legal immigrants who did things according to the rules to allow those that skipped the lines to have the same benefits.

    5. Re:Idiocy by vux984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Also, how can this be about illegal immigrants if they are going to scan US citizens???

      Precisely. My post was that this was an absurd rationalization to pander support. He might as well have claimed it would stop child porn too.

    6. Re:Idiocy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I know that you are trying to be fescisious

      The word you were looking for there is "facetious", Sparky, not "fescisious".

      Does your Dad know you're posting from his Slashdot account?

    7. Re:Idiocy by Grishnakh · · Score: 5, Interesting

      You're kidding, right? While there's certainly individuals in both groups who wouldn't be easily mistaken for being part of the other group, there are definitely individuals in each group whose appearance is more ambiguous.

      Besides, there's a lot of Mexicans who look to me just like any northern-European-descended American. Not all Mexicans are directly descended from native Americans, you know. A lot are mostly Spanish, and some are even German. Watch some Spanish-language soap operas on your local spanish-language channel some time: a lot of the people on there don't look much different from Americans, and have rather pale skin.

      Lots of people could be easily made to pass as another ethnic group just by changing their clothes and haircut. That's exactly what the Al Queda hijackers did: they cut their hair and shaved their beards. Many middle-easterners don't look that different from many Americans except for their beards. In addition, many Israelis look much like the Arabs who hate them.

    8. Re:Idiocy by BigSlowTarget · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Really? Most of us are justifiably afraid of terrorism? Some Americans are not cowards and are not willing to sacrifice the very living ideals that make the country special for the petty illusion of 'being safe.' 0.001% of the US population were killed when the towers fell. That is definitely a cause for seeking justice, might be a cause for preventative actions and could make some call for revenge, but fear? You have a better chance of dying in the bath.

      Get real people. YOU ARE MORTAL SO YOU ARE GOING TO DIE. Make your life worth something instead of cowering from shadows. Prove that you're worth the soldiers' noble sacrifices and their exposure to real danger by shouldering just a little tiny bit of the burden. Fight fear and choose wisdom. Don't call for killing American freedom this way and don't support it when it happens.

    9. Re:Idiocy by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 5, Funny

      In addition, many Israelis look much like the Arabs who hate them.

      And, of course, vice-versa.

      Maybe that's the problem: ol' Jehovah couldn't tell which group of Semites he was promising the land to, they all look alike to him after all.

      --
      Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
      You cannot wash away blood with blood
    10. Re:Idiocy by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Most of us are justifiably afraid of real terrorism.

      Cancer and heart disease have killed somewhere in the neighborhood of ten million people in the past ten years. Over a million people died in accidents in the past decade; about 400,000 of those were killed in motor vehicle accidents.

      In the past ten years, about 160,000 people were murdered.

      About 30,000 drowned.

      Only 2,974 were killed in acts of terrorism carried out by foreign nationals within the U.S.

      If you're justifiably afraid of terrorism, you must be justifiably scared shitless of all this other, much more dangerous stuff.

      And yet nobody gets all bent out of shape about how we have to suspend habeus corpus to protect ourselves from the dangers of swimming pools, cars, and Big Macs.

      So long as we think fearing terrorists is justified, we will want Big Government to protect us. (Never mind that it's the brutal and stupid foreign policy of Big Government that motivates the terrorist's hate.)

      --
      Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
      You cannot wash away blood with blood
    11. Re:Idiocy by LateArthurDent · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sure. Terrorism is scary. It's false bravado to claim you aren't worried about it to some degree.

      Bullshit. I have one or two orders of magnitude greater chance of dying from heart disease, but I still eat greasy burgers. But I don't fear it enough to stop eating greasy burgers. I have a greater chance of dying on a car accident, but I don't fear it enough to avoid getting in my car everyday to go to work. You're telling me I should fear fucking terrorism enough to inconvenience me to take my shoes off at an airport? Fuck that. I don't, and I can't possibly understand how anyone else in the security line can justify it when they had the courage to drive to the airport and eat mcdonalds for lunch. Hell, the chances of their plane crashing from accidental causes is greater.

      Terrorism is a non-threat. When you believe otherwise, you're doing the terrorists a favor because terrorizing you is the whole point.

    12. Re:Idiocy by LateArthurDent · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No. Fear isn't all or nothing. It's stupid not to fear terrorism at all.

      No, it is not. If you're going to be afraid of things that have almost no chance of ever affecting you at all, you're not going to live your life normally. In fact, we're NOT living our lives normally because of that stupid fear. We're putting up with crap we would never have put up with before 9/11. Get the number of American deaths due to terrorism (any type, including not on american soil) over the past 10 years. Get the number of American deaths due to traffic accidents over the past 10 years. Then tell me the fear is justified.

      19 guys were able to do significant damage to the US. They since have successfully operated in Britain and Spain. Isn't that frightening on some level?

      No more than Timothy McVeigh's bombing, but nobody seemed to go batshit insane after that (2 people caused ~600 deaths with the oklahoma city bombing vs 19 people caused ~3000 deaths with 9/11...I'm not sure why this is relevant, but your point seemed to be that because only 19 people caused all that damage, this is something that has never happened before, so I guess I should point out that in actually deaths per person responsible ratios were higher with an event of terrorism that happened before). They found out who was responsible, had a trial and that was that.

      Look, I'm not saying law enforcement and intelligence agencies don't need to take steps to try to prevent that type of thing, but it's a pure law enforcement problem. It's like gang violence. You don't change your life because some kid on the other side of your town got shot. You don't change your life because some nutjobs are killing people. You worry about things that actually have a chance of affecting you. You don't want to die of cancer, be afraid of smoking cigarettes. You want to avoid dying in a traffic accident? Try to be a more attentive and careful driver. You're afraid of heart disease? Try to eat healthier. Those steps you take will have a much greater positive effect in your life than getting fingerprinted when you leave the country ever will.

      I really don't get it. Some crazed American anarchist bombs a building and people react normally to it (there's grief, there's anger, that's all normal. We don't have a fundamental change and start fingerprinting people who enter the proximity of federal buildings). Some crazed religious nutjobs hijack planes and crash them into buildings and everyone freaks out because they're foreign and hold a religion not of their own and people start thinking it's ok to wiretap our phones without warrants, it's ok to fingerprint americans just because they're leaving the country, it's ok to hold people prisoner without trials...

      Also, fear is usally not of death. More people are frightened of public speaking than death.

      Alright, "fear of public speaking" is a fear, but it's a completely different fear than fear of death. It gives you some knots in your stomach, depending on your anxiety levels it might even cause you to avoid speaking in public at all. If you're genuinely afraid that you're going to die, you're going to do things that you would never do under any other circumstances. People were jumping off the towers because they'd rather die by splatting in the concrete than in the fire. You're not going to jump off a building because you're rather not make that 3pm presentation. This is my entire point, btw...you should be more scared of traffic accidents than terrorism, just like you should be more scared of death than of public speaking.

      Fear of violence, uncontrolled violence, is scarier than dynig at an old age in a medical bed

      Seriously? Dying a slow, possibly painful, most likely undignified (being unable to go to the bathroom by yourself) death is scarier to you than 2 minutes of panic followed by a quick death?

      Bottom line is that

  2. One step at a time . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You can see how they take little baby steps. One at a time. In ten years imagine what will be happening.

    1. Re:One step at a time . . . by vux984 · · Score: 5, Funny

      You can see how they take little baby steps. One at a time. In ten years imagine what will be happening.

      Border lineups will be days long, and the government will be suing SAP for promising that it would work, based on a fraudulent tech demo that's gone missing?

    2. Re:One step at a time . . . by tsm_sf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You can see how they take little baby steps. One at a time. In ten years imagine what will be happening.

      Weird to see a post from 1999 pop up randomly.

      --
      Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
    3. Re:One step at a time . . . by dov_0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In Soviet Russia, um. Well, actually it's getting pretty similar...

      --
      sudo mount --milk --sugar /cup/tea /mouth /etc/init.d/relax start
  3. Barriers to leaving a country by ceoyoyo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All countries exercise at least some control over who can enter, but there's only one kind of country that erects barriers to who can leave. How long until you guys build a wall? Oh, apparently you've started already.

    1. Re:Barriers to leaving a country by nokiator · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Welcome to East Germany 2.0!

  4. Why? by sweatyboatman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "We are trying to ensure we know more about who came and who left," [Michael Hardin] said. "We have a large population of illegal immigrants in the United States - we want to make sure the person getting on the plane really is the person the records show to be leaving."

    huh? so the epidemic of people pretending to leave the country on commercial flights by booking flights and sending doppelgangers in their place is finally over! rejoice Americans! we are all now super safe!

    --
    It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
  5. Won't work by royallthefourth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    None of the illegal immigrants I've ever met have arrived by airplane.

    This leaves two options: either these guys are really stupid, or the real goal is different from the stated goal.

  6. They arlready do this to non US residents by Roy+Ward · · Score: 5, Informative

    As someone who occasionally visits your country (with a New Zealand passport and valid work visa), I can tell you that all non-US citizens are already subject to this indignity, for no better reasons than you will be. It's unfortunately just the next step (I've never been fingerprinted going into any other country, or any other time at all for that matter).

  7. Re:Free by cptdondo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No shit. I was born under communism; I vividly recall the grade school lectures about leaving the country being a crime.

    We left there to the land of the free. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would live to see the day when borders in formerly communist nations are no more and Americans must present the proper papers and fingerprints! to leave the country.

  8. What if you refuse? by jmv · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When you come in to the US, they tell you that you don't have to comply with the checks, but that if you don't you can't enter. So what if you refuse to comply with that one? You can't leave?

    --
    Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
  9. Re:i totally agree with your sentiment by Chabo · · Score: 5, Informative

    In all fairness, he did say one kind of country, for which I think he meant "viciously authoritarian", or something similar.

    --
    Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
  10. what a difference 10 years make by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know, I'm a Canadian, and ten years ago, I would have voted to join the US. I felt that Americans recognised the value of their freedoms and that they had, and would fight to keep, a more free society than just about anywhere else on Earth. Today, I won't even travel there. It reminds me of all those B movies just after WW2 "Achtung! Show me your papers". How could y'all have just let this happen ?

  11. maybe those who are complaining can explain: by __aarzwb9394 · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Why do you hate America?"(TM) so much that you want to leave?

    1. Re:maybe those who are complaining can explain: by MaskedSlacker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Precisely because of shit like this.

  12. Ya this is kinda scary by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Saying who can and can't enter is, well, part of being an nation. I would place it akin to an individual being able to decide who can and can't enter their home. Part of being a sovereign nation is you need to be able to decide who is allowed to come in.

    However not being able to leave? Well again I'd say it is like a private individual and while you can tell me I can't come in to your house, once you've let me in you have to let me out when I want to go. Barriers for exit are things that are normally associated with extremely oppressive societies. The USSR had very strict border control and it was more to keep their populace in than to keep foreigners out. Thus I see this as a step down a very bad path.

    It also raises some serious legal questions for people like me. I am a citizen of two nations, the US and Canada. I have a right to go to either nation. So is it legal for the US to say "No, you can't go to Canada,"? Who are they to tell me I can't go to my country?

  13. Can't wait for the first 'catch' by superdave80 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Brave Homeland Security Officer: Place your thumb here.
    Traveler: Ok.
    *Presses thumb to scanner*
    Brave Homeland Security Officer: Ah-ha! This says that you are in this country illegally! I've got you now!
    Traveler/Illegal immigrant: Sooooo... since I'm not allowed to be in this country, do you want me to get on my plane and leave, or what?
    Brave Homeland Security Officer: Yes! And, um, never come back! That'll teach you!
    Traveler/Illegal immigrant: Yes, this punishment of being delayed from my flight for 30 seconds has surely made me so uncomfortable that I won't ever sneak back into this country. You win.

  14. Re:Honestly, what's the big deal? by ledow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "So what if they want to fingerprint travelers entering the country? I think this is a good idea"
    "So what if they want to fingerprint travelers exiting the country? I think this is a good idea"
    "So what if they want to fingerprint travelers changing flights at the country? I think this is a good idea"
    "So what if they want to fingerprint travelers flying past the country? I think this is a good idea"
    "So what if they want to fingerprint drivers? I think this is a good idea"
    "So what if they want to fingerprint cyclists? I think this is a good idea"
    "So what if they want to fingerprint pedestrians? I think this is a good idea"
    "So what if they want to fingerprint everyone? I think this is a good idea"

    It's called "unnecessary feature creep". Providing fingerprints at a border helps no more than providing other, non-biometric, information at the border, whether you've just murdered someone or not. Either you're on the database (and thus can be flagged in an instant by having an A.P.B. put out) or you're not. But unnecessary feature creep paves the way to a surveillance society. 50 years ago we didn't even *have* this technology, now it's being made compulsory if you want to fly, drive, cycle, ... and eventually it's just compulsory.

    Plus, that data is *personal* under most country's definitions of personal data. In the EU that means it's subject to the Data Protection Act which means I have a legal assurance (whether it's carried out or not is another matter) that the data will be kept private, not be disclosed except for explicit purposes and that only authorised people will see it. The US does not, and never has, provided such guarantees to visitors (even if it intended to break them anyway once they were on paper)

    "Please tell me how this is an infringement on your 'rights'?"

    I have the right to pass freely through almost every port in the world without undue let or hindrance. The US just removed that. I also have the right to protect my personal information and to refuse to give biometric data if I so wish. That right was just lost. Just because in America you didn't HAVE those rights in the first place, that's no reason to not understand why other people are upset (and we are by definition talking about international travellers here).

    "The DHS/ICE already do biometric scanning of all *permanent* residents when they're entering the country, and I mean fingerprinting all the fingers in both of your hands. People with US Passports, by comparison, are waived through, which I think is a incredibly stupid thing."

    Yep. Because you've just scanned the fingerprints of someone that, by definition, you have zero record of anywhere else (because they are not a US citizen until that time). Yet you let known criminals walk through because they have a US passport. That's just STUPID. And another nail in the "we need this" coffin. It's an *unnecessary* measure.

    "Besides, the EU has been doing this for quite some time. Get over it."

    No they haven't. I am an EU citizen and have NEVER provided my fingerprints EVER for ANY purpose in ANY country - I even have a 10 year British passport, a 10-year British driving license (both with EU-certified RFID etc. in them) and never had to provide anything but an authenticated photo and documentation (for the next renewal in a decade's time it might be more tricky to avoid being fingerprinted if people don't stand up to this crap NOW) - and only last year I travelled through 10 countries in the EU within two weeks on a cruise ship. In fact, that's why I'm not flying to the US ever again - that and the "we need the right to copy your laptop data and not tell you what we did with it" - that's a KILLER for me, because it means I would be breaking the law in my own country by disclosing private, personalised business data.

    You're throwing a right away every time you say "I don't see a problem with it, so okay". What you should be saying is "I don't see the need. So why should I?". Whethe

  15. As a famous terrorist leader once said... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >>I might be less critical of such actions if it weren't for the fact that "security" isn't being improved or actually even being addressed.

    "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

    Of course, this was also said by a major figure of what we would call, today, an insurgent force, fighting against the established government of the country. He spent much of that war in another country, raising funds to support what those who claimed they had a legitimate government considered to be a terrorist action. By recent standards, for the funding part alone, two guys were sentenced to 65 years, just this week.

    His name was Benjamin Franklin.

  16. Editor's Note by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Did anyone see the Editor's note? Should probably update the Post.

    Editors Note - This story originally contained a representation that the biometrics trial in Atlanta and Detroit included the fingerprint scanning of US citizens. This has since been proved to be incorrect and the story has been modified - only non-US citizens will be expected to provide a biometric record.