Air America breaking news: "USA to fingerprint ALL visitors !!!"

In article , nobody
wrote:

But if a government captures your own body's information
(fingerprints, DNA, eye retina scan etc), then they "own" part of
your body/identity.

So you have some sort of bizarre fantasy where they could do *more*
things to you than any major government already *can*, right?

"Mr. Ashcroft, we have this Mr. Nobody's DNA on file!"

"Great, we can activate the orbital mind control lasers to affect just
*him*! BWAhahahahahaaaaa! No, if we just had his fingerprints, we
could build a perfect Life Model Decoy!"

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

"AJC" wrote

Exactly. The UK, Spain and other democracies have lived with terrorism
for many years. It is not always easy but it is important to keep a
balance between security and liberty. If you end up turning a country
in to a police state out of fear of terrorism, then the terrorists
have won.

If "the UK, Spain and other democracies have lived with terrorism for many
years.", evidently something isn't working right.

Unless of course you think living with terrorism is a desireable and natural
state of affairs.

Maybe it's time to try something different. Not saying that fingerprinting
everyone is the *right* solution, but something other than the status quo
would seem to be in order.

Pete

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?

"Chad Irby" skrev i meddelandet
...
In article ,
"Lennart Petersen" wrote:

99% ? Interesting. I transferred recently in 6 minutes from
International
to domestic including security check. Was in Sandefjord Norway.
How many transfers international-domestic are done in less 6 minutes in
U.S
?

You're taking a very unusual example (EU internal transfers), and
pretending that it's common worldwide.
To start with Norway isn't an EU member, and furthermore EU or Schengen
transfers aren't very unusual. They are made in a number of at least several
hundred thousands daily.
And flights between european countries are counting for much more than 1% of
the worlds flights.
No lines or short lines are typical for the average inter European flight.
Can't remember the last time I had to line up for a long time or having more
than 3-4 persons ahead for the security check or other things. Passport
controls are abolished inside Schengen and customs are typically easy. In
fact the customs have never stopped me at an European airport so far.
May I guess you've never been to Europe or perhaps not much outside your own
rural village ?

Chad Irby wrote:
In article ,
"Sjoerd" wrote:


You claimed that US customs ( I believe you mean immigration) is faster than
"99% of the countries in the world". I have been to 75 countries and the US
is amongst the 10 countries with the longest/slowest lines for immigration
and customs.


Is this because the process for each person is long, or because of the
relative number of people coming in at a time?

The number of people coming and the number of people working for
Immigration. But, if we double the time it takes to process each person
by requiring the photo and fingerprints, can you imagine the results,
unless we hire twice as many Immigration people? What actually occurs
with the photo and fingerprints? I doubt Immigration waits for a
fingerprint or image search for know "evil-doers".

"Marie Lewis" wrote:


Please note that we all have the rest of the world to visit. Why visit a
country which treats us as criminals?

Not to be argumentative Marie but think what you're
saying...security has been tightened all over (including your
country) hasn't it?...
--

-Gord.

"Chad Irby" skrev i meddelandet
om...
In article ,
"Marie Lewis" wrote:

"Chad Irby" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Lennart Petersen" wrote:

99% ? Interesting. I transferred recently in 6 minutes from
International to domestic including security check. Was in
Sandefjord Norway. How many transfers international-domestic are
done in less 6 minutes in U.S?

You're taking a very unusual example (EU internal transfers), and
pretending that it's common worldwide.

Now, *that's* interesting.

Take a look at the previous post.

I did. It's even funnier. He's comparing a country that has less
international airline passengers per year than *Orlando*, which isn't
even in the top 5 international airports in the US...
Well according to Orlandos website
http://fcn.state.fl.us/goaa/
they had 1 682 457 international passengers in year 2002
while Norway had, according to AVINOR http://www.avinor.no/
had in year 2003: 6 779 971 international p scheduled and another 1 763 258
from charter flights. Seem to be about 5 times your Orlando statistic.
Oslo alone had 5 700 000 international passengers.
So you're wrong on that point.

Why are the lines longer to get into the US? Because more people *fly*
there. And, by the way, we're having a record year for tourism of all
types...
So lines should be exceptional longer in Germany(82 000 000 )
than Luxembourg (454 000)?
No an efficient airport doesn't works so.
Big airport, more staff, equal to the expected arrivals.
Small airport, fewer staff and in fact more likely to create lines in case
of an occasional flight with many passengers.

On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 15:32:04 -0400, nobody wrote:

Peter Kemp wrote:
I'm just glad I get an exemption from the process thanks to a nice
shiny government visa, because otherwise I would *ot* come to the US

I thought it was currently the opposite: all those entering on a visa are fingerprinted.
In october, it will be all travellers whether on a real visa, or a 90 day visa waiver.

For standard tourist visas you are correct, anyone holding one goes
through the process. I've got a different type of visa as I'm in the
US on UK government business. Which is exempt from the procedures (and
also means that I tend to spend less time at immigration even than US
citizens).
Still takes too bloody long though - of the 30+ countries I've been
to, entering over half I've never had to spend more than 20 seconds at
immigration (and quite often just walk past showing the *outside* of
my UK passport), and I'll be buggered if they're getting my
fingerprints without a fight.

---
Peter Kemp

Life is short - drink faster

On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 21:47:07 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

In article ,
Peter Kemp wrote:

Oh, and defending your home is not illegal, the emphasis in the UK is
defending your *life*, and to use reasonable force (where reasonable
force does *not*include waiting for burglars with an illegally held
shorgun, then shooting one of them in the back).

...in the dark, in the wee hours of the morning, in a remote area, when
the police wouldn't do much of anything...

Which is a policing problem, not a legal one.

Nice of you folks to protect violent burglars like that (look at the
wonderful followups of what the "victimized" burglar has done since).

Which one - the one without *any* violent convictions who is
mouldering in his grave after being murdered? Or the other one (and I
can't recall any violent convicitons for him either) whose is
admittedly a miserable git?
---
Peter Kemp

Life is short - drink faster

" wrote:
Not to be argumentative Marie but think what you're
saying...security has been tightened all over (including your
country) hasn't it?...

The USA was a farce in terms of security prior to 9-11. Other countries have
far more sensible security.

Other countries didn't have to revolutionlise their security, the USA did. And
the USA went overboard, and not entirely in a very logical fashion. It was
very politically driven.

In many cases, other countries only had to adjust security to bend to USA
requests, not to improve security.