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Dept. of Homeland Security To Test Iris Scanners
SonicSpike writes "The Homeland Security Department plans to test futuristic iris scan technology that stores digital images of people's eyes in a database and is considered a quicker alternative to fingerprints. The department will run a two-week test in October of commercially sold iris scanners at a Border Patrol station in McAllen, Texas, where they will be used on illegal immigrants, said Arun Vemury, program manager at the department's Science and Technology branch. 'The test will help us determine how viable this is for potential (department) use in the future,' Vemury said."
Brought to you by all those people who thought this administration would be better than the last.
From deciding this is a great idea and putting it everywhere? They already fingerprint (foreigners), so iris scanning isn't really that far off. I won't bore you anymore with the slippery slope argument, I think we all know where this is going.
I wonder what it'll take to rally the docile United States citizens to fight back. You guys have guns and shit, don't you? Maybe you should go confederate on the government's ass.
GAP Sign: Hello Mr. Yukkamoto and welcome back to the GAP!
John Anderton: *Mr. Yukkamoto?*
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
...when the damn things are working, anyway!
A few of our airports have them for inbound passengers, Gatwick in London being one of them.
I found them quite useful to avoid the customs queues when I flew back into the UK but a lot of that is because so few other people registered to use them. It also took me three or four uses before I'd worked out the optimal positions to look into the mirrors, I would imagine that if a lot of people signed up to use them, it would be slower than going via a human customs officer.
Plus, as I implied earlier, about 50% of the time they were Out Of Order anyway, so the benefits seem quite negligible.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
How many times have you heard of people leaving their iris prints on a doorknob, or wine glass, or a gun?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
its not worse either
That rather depends on your vantage point, now doesn't it? GWB never tried to tell me that I must buy a product from a for-profit industry.....
and whats it got to do with this new administration, really?
Who do you think runs Homeland Security? The underpants gnomes?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
especially one led by a legal scholar
You mean the same legal scholar with the anti-gun voting record? The one that voted for retroactive immunity for telecommunications corporations that broke the law? The one that thinks the commerce clause gives the Federal Government the power to compel the citizenry to do business with for-profit enterprise? The one that thinks the 1st amendment doesn't apply when citizens band together under the guise of a corporation?
That legal scholar?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Dunno. From my northern vantage point here in delicious Canada, I knew it wasn't going to be better. I knew in fact based on his previous history, and lack of experience it was going to be worse. You guys got a "Iggy lite", which of course means that he's got no real world experience, and believes that government intervention in all things is the only proper way to solve any issue. And when there's actual issues at hand, he's no where to be found and letting anyone else deal with it so he has no blame.
Bureaucracy, it does you harm. However Bush for his faults, especially 'social conservatism' or 'passionate conservatism' was mostly at fault, and was doomed to failure for a reason.
Om, nomnomnom...
If the wars were really about that smoking hole in Manhattan, then we probably should have gone after the guys who caused it.
This sig has been stolen. Return it to its original user for a reward.
What a surprise. You remembered the people killed on 9/11 but you forgot all of the US and allied service-members and innocent civilians killed by the wars.
Hundreds of thousands have died. Millions have been displaced. And our country's treasury has been raided. I don't think Halliburton caused the wars, but I do know they have conducted themselves as war profiteers. And that is a vile crime.
Why can the DHS and the rest of the government spend so much money on fences and stuff but don't strike at the root of illegal immigration: The fact that legal immigration is full of problems.
That's not the root of illegal immigration. The root of illegal immigration is the lack of enforcement of employment law. Make it impossible for illegal immigrants to work and the problem will solve itself without a fence.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The root of illegal immigration is the lack of enforcement of employment law.
The root of illegal immigration is economic imbalance. More money and higher paying jobs exist in the US than exist in Mexico. Accordingly we should expect to see people migrating to where the economic opportunity happens to be. It's like osmosis - people will move in the direction of money an opportunity. Laws can do little more than slow the movement. Expecting people to obey the law when the alternative is abject poverty and possible starvation is absurd. We don't have a problem with Canadian's immigrating illegally because there is no economic incentive for them to do so. Help Mexico build up its economy and the problem will go away. Continue to ignore Mexico's economic problems and the problem will continue indefinitely. Building bigger fences and enforcing more and more restrictive laws will NEVER solve the problem but it will cost vast sums of money.
http://4gifs.com/gallery/d/146816-2/Al-Qaeda_USA_Iraq.gif
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results
The quote says that the scanners will be used on illegal immigrants. They didn't say that it would be used in order to find illegal immigrants. If you already know that someone is an illegal immigrant then why bother with the scanning? Just send them back to where they came from.
Which is why we need to take that economic opportunity away from them unless they play by our rules.
Unless you plan to make illegal immigration a capital crime, you will not stop it no matter how well you enforce the laws. The economic incentives greatly outweigh the consequences. If the choice is between starvation and breaking immigration laws, the choice is easy.
It's not our job to help Mexico build up its economy.
No it's not required but that doesn't make it a bad idea. We didn't have to help Europe or Japan after WWII either but it was a good idea to do so. An economically healthy Mexico would benefit the US far more than the few illegal migrant workers do now. We reap the benefits of trillions of dollars in trade each year with the EU and Japan, countries we helped. Had we crushed them when they were down things would almost certainly be worse than they are today.
But if you prefer to be short sighted and selfish, that's fine. Just recognize that by your actions have consequences - in this case, illegal immigrants by the millions. You also need to recognize that you are wasting money on a futile, greedy and spiteful response.
... used to enforce artificial boundaries. If we have the technology to make iris scanners, made with very delicate nanoscale components, doing immense amounts of pattern matching, hooked to a huge networked database, then we have enough technology to make a world of abundance for everyone, and essentially, there is no reason to restrict immigration anywhere in the world, and no need for wars over resources, etc. Something I wrote related to that:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Ummm, how do you dust for irises?
The Taliban? You mean the guys who offered to turn over Bin Laden to face trial in Pakistan, but we refused? You remember Bin Laden. He's the guy we put Pakistan in charge of finding. Makes perfect sense.
From my non-American point of view, the difference between American Liberals and Republicans is like the difference between getting bitten by a cobra or mauled by a bear. One might be somewhat less painful than the other but the end result is not that different. From what I have seen, it does not matter who is the American president or from what party he is from since all of them will stick to the status quo on foreign policies (preserving American "greatness") while also eroding the rights of not only American citizens but by setting bad examples to other foreign governments to follow.