Ten Fingerprints to Enter the U.S.

Tanja Stumberger

International visitors flying to the United States through JFK Airport in New York will from now have to face identification by submitting all ten fingerprints — an increase from two. The system has already been in place in Washington, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, and other major U.S. cities. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) argues that this heightened security procedure will identify potential terror suspects and visa fraud.

Witnessing these developments, it is important to ask ourselves these two questions: 1) is it realistic to expect that terrorists or visa violators will be caught as a result of these measures and 2) what impact do these new measures have on individual privacy?

First, there has been "absolutely no success from this [system] in catching terrorists," said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer at BT Counterpane in Santa Clara, California, who has studied the system. (It should be noted that all of the September 11th terrorists entered the United States legally.)

Moreover, this security system is not only ineffective and creating major disruption at U.S. entry points, but it is also vastly expensive:

The upgrade, to be installed at all U.S. ports of entry by September, will cost around $280 million, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The U.S. government has been collecting digital fingerprints and photographs of nearly all non-citizens aged 14 and up entering the country since 2004, officials said, in a Homeland Security program called US-VISIT, at a cost of $1.7 billion.

Second, the government is incrementally violating the privacy of airline passengers. In the past, if international travelers wanted to enter the U.S., they would have been obliged to remove their shoes, submit laptops for explosives testing, pose for a digital photograph of our face, and have two index fingers scanned. Somehow, this wasn’t enough?

It may seem absurd, but what can we, as foreign nationals, expect to happen next?  Will they take a sample of our blood? Our hair? Our urine? Will they scan our eyes? X-ray our bones? Why not just record our genetic information, our voices, our weight, and our height?

Would you agree to all this, as long as the government said that it is in their discretion to decide what to demand from the people that would like to enter the U.S.?

We should also keep in mind that the more information government has, the more likely it is that the information will be abused. How long do you think it will take until the government takes advantage of the US-VISIT database and uses it for other purposes?

There is a thin line between the government's power (i.e., obligation) to protect us from foreign or domestic enemies and the violation of our rights. The American Founding Fathers were well aware of this danger. One of them, Thomas Jefferson, warned that "there is a natural tendency for government to grow and for liberty to yield." Government will find arguments to increase its own power, to monitor individuals more, to interfere in their lives and affairs, to regulate, and to "guide" us down an arbitrary and predetermined path. It is for precisely this reason that when the U.S. government was established, it was given specific and defined constitutional power as well as — and no less importantly — the limits to these powers. These limits are essential if we want to protect our rights, and prevent governmental encroachment of liberty.

The fact is that the government does not simply move from one extreme to another — from absolutely no violation of our rights to full-blown intrusion. It will be step by step, as we have seen before and as we are seeing today. Such moves will be silent and in the guise of benevolent intentions. This is exactly why we should fear and resist any incremental infringement of our rights. We ought not to wait until our rights become fully beholden to the government's discretion.

At that point, it will already be too late.

Topics: Human Rights, Law and Constitution | 0 comments