View Single Post
  #73  
Old April 3rd 04, 11:51 PM
tadaa
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default

Dear allies, welcome to the age of digital fascism... :

The expansion, which will take effect by Sept. 30, means only diplomats

and
travelers from Mexico and Canada will not be fingerprinted and

photographed
when they enter the United States through 115 airports and 14 seaports,

said
Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security at

the
Department of Homeland Security. ...


I see couple of problems here

a) Optical fingerprint scanning is not that reliable, it can be (quite
easily) faked.
b) You still have to trust the document. What about corrupt official selling
identities, theft of empty id cards or if the country making these documents
are in the plan too.
c) Is the information gathered safe? Or will be there a new market for
stolen identities (fingerprints, pictures) in addition of stolen credit card
numbers.
d) What is the US policy with this information? Will it be destroyed when I
leave the country (doubt it), to what purposes it will be used.
e) Only airports and seaports are mentioned, what if I come from Mexico or
Canada?

Mayby they hope that they can automatise profiling as the information is in
digital form and US seems to specialize in that kind of information
gathering. It just doesn't have that great track record against terrorist or
weapons of mass destruction.
Of course it is the wet dream of every big brother out there to have a file
of every person and in digital form to enable that computer aided data
analysis. And the actual use of this just seems to be to collect a database
of every person who ever visited USA that would include their picture,
fingerprint, credit card numer etc.

Wouldn't it just be easier if we were given a barcode when we were born?