DHS To Grab Biometric Data From Green Card Holders 248
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Nextgov:
"The Homeland Security Department has announced plans to expand its biometric data collection program to include foreign permanent residents and refugees. Almost all noncitizens will be required to provide digital fingerprints and a photograph upon entry into the United States as of Jan. 18. A notice (PDF) in Friday's Federal Register said expansion of the US Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology Program (US VISIT) will include 'nearly all aliens,' except Canadian citizens on brief visits. Those categories include permanent residents with green cards, individuals seeking to enter on immigrant visas, and potential refugees. The US VISIT program was developed after the Sept.11, 2001 terrorist attacks to collect fingerprints from foreign visitors and run them against the FBI's terrorist watch list and other criminal databases. Another phase of the project, to develop an exit system to track foreign nationals leaving the country, has run into repeated setbacks."
Reader MirrororriM points out other DHS news that they're thinking about monitoring blogs for information on terrorists.
Well (Score:1, Insightful)
I have no problem with doing this to non-citizens. I realize this will result in extrapolations into citizens, killing children, torturing puppies and the like but I'm saying tracking non-citizens is just common sense.
Monitoring Blogs (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like a good way to poison your monitoring database.
D.H.S. (Score:4, Insightful)
der heutigen Stasi.
Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)
but I'm saying tracking non-citizens is just common sense.
Of course, if it really was "common sense", then it's the kind of thing that would have been in place for decades. Ergo, it is not "common sense", but yet another "security theatre" response.
Re:US citizens will be next? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess the 'small' exception to this are the 'few' illegal alien, non-citizens coming in periodically from the southern border.
So, if you want to avoid HS survellience, just come across the border along TX, AZ, CA.....and don't register. It has worked so far, I doubt they'll be changing that anytime soon....
Re:Great... How much longer till 1984? (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. Tolerating routine violations of privacy for one class of people desensitizes us to routine violations of privacy for everyone.
I would go a little further and say that systematic abuse of any class of individuals, no matter how unpopular, is something worthy of caution. Take punitive taxation of smokers, just to pick an example. I've never smoked, never will smoke, think it's a spectacularly bad idea ... but I still disagree with heavy taxes applied to cigarette sales. Why? Because if we tolerate governmental mistreatment of one group (no matter what the justification) the odds are they'll eventually do something that hits closer to home. Keep firmly in mind that a significant fraction of our leadership and senior bureaucrats are either sociopaths or have a few well-intentioned screws loose. Either way, it's best not to give them too much authority, because they'll misuse it.
To help the non-germanophiles . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
der heutigen Stasi.
. . . this means something like, "today's Stasi."
The Stasi were a nasty and creepy bunch of East German secret police: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi [wikipedia.org].
They ended collecting *so* much information, that they couldn't analyze it all:
The MfS infiltrated almost every aspect of GDR life. In the mid-1980s, a network of civilian informants, Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter (IMs, Unofficial Collaborators), began growing in both German states; by the time East Germany collapsed in 1989, the MfS employed an estimated 91,000 employees and 300,000 informants. About one of every 50 East Germans collaborated with the MfS â" one of the most extensive police infiltrations of a society in history. In 2007 an article in BBC stated that "Some calculations have concluded that in East Germany there was one informer to every seven citizens."
The lesson here is that if you are collecting a lot of data, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are collecting the right (and useful) data.
Does this kind of program even work? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think two things:
1. WTF. I'm not a crimial, and the majority of people aren't either and yet we're all subjected to this kind of BS.
2. Does it even work? Why are countries making all of these efforts and the citizens are the last to hear about it.
Will biometrics really make a difference at the borders? The first thing I think of are ways that a person could get around this
By water or land people cross the borders all the time.
This all started with 9/11 by people who were in the country legally... so ya, this just doesn't make any sense to me and makes me more frustrated with our governments.
Re:US citizens will be next? (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you not realize that it takes a picture to get an ID card?
Ok.
Do you not realize that it takes a fingerprint (at least in my home state) to get an ID card?
And what shithole of a state do you live in? Not everyone lives in a shithole state.
Do you not realize that every fucking citizen in the US has given up a fingerprint or picture already?
No, in fact they haven't. That's the point.
More importantly, The sep 11 hijackers had legitimately issued id, in their own names.
Drinking from a fire hose (Score:4, Insightful)
The lesson here is that if you are collecting a lot of data, that doesn't necessarily mean that you are collecting the right (and useful) data.
It's like the NSA drinking from a fire hose: they are collecting so much more data than they can analyze in real time! Such data is only useful post factum, to retrace what happened (cf. 9/11). The chance to catch something useful in time and react proactively is extremely slim.
So the question is: is it worth it to undermine informational freedom of citizens (and here non-citizens) and give Government a huge database that could be used to silence opposition by blackmailing or that could leak data to third parties like, say, private investigators, just to facilitate forensic investigations? Some may say yes, others would say no.
Re:US citizens will be next? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great... How much longer till 1984? (Score:3, Insightful)
It will also be slowly expanded to include citizens.
Give them an inch, and they take a foot.
Re:US citizens will be next? (Score:4, Insightful)
The last time I tried to cross the Canadian border was so annoying I have not bothered going back to Canada in a long time. Every since 9/11, paranoia has been reigning supreme.
Of course, tracking fingerprints and pictures will not make anyone more secure, since (a) the probability of dying from a terrorist attack is tiny in comparasion to many other daily dangers we embrace everyday without a second thought, like driving, for instance, and (b) the would-be terrorist organizations, if they are really all that inclined, need only find fresh recruits who have not been fingered by the FBI or Homeland Insecurity yet.
41,000 people die on US highways every year. How many people die in the US from terrorism every year? The attention to the so-called threat does not mesh with the actual facts and the real risk factors.
So I am not impressed in the least about any of this crap. Just another excuse for the government to stir up fear to create its own "need".
Re:They are just thinking about doing that!?!? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because you say there are many people with have no problem with this does not make it true.
The people who "dont have a problem: are most like
illegal immigrant , or people from countries with similarly totalitarian governments anyway, You are right, I am sure Russians and Chinese will be used to such treatment.
I certainly would not consider traveling to the US
whilst such draconian measures are in place.
I would have thought a considerable reduction in tourism would be missed.
Re:US citizens will be next? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's really random (Score:3, Insightful)
Part of the problem is that there's little to no accountability in the DHS so assholes get to stay. Another part of the problem is it doesn't pay all that well so they don't get the best and brightest, as it were. So you get a real mixed bag. I've had people who were extremely polite, I've had assholes that were looking for a way to keep me out (I'm a US citizen so they can't).
On the Canadian side of the border (where I usually travel) I've found they are usually politer, but not always and generally not much more competent. One time I was there I had a real nice guy that was clearing me, but the guy in the next lane over was being a complete ass to two girls, who were citizens. Another time I had a girl who asked me a ridiculous number of questions trying to be through because the dual citizenship thing confused her (I have two passports and no stamps).
The US border I think is likely to take a while to get any better. DHS is a total mess and even if Obama's crew wants to clean it up, it'll take time. PLus there's only so good it'll ever get. When you pays low wages, you get low quality workers often.
Re:US citizens will be next? (Score:3, Insightful)
...Up until the last time I went to the U.S.A. I hated crossing into Canada more. But now, the U.S. wins the 'onerous prize'.
Yes, indeed. The last time I came back from Canada, the US ding dongs gave me a very hard time, and was deliberately trying to work up my ire. It's as if these guys have nothing better to do other than to harass border crossers.
To which I say, what's the point? What is gained by bad-assing people crossing the border? It's really takes from the whole idea of a "good getaway" if you are always being steamed at the border.
For me, it's a 3-4 hour drive to the border, and it's not something I look forward to. I suppose neither country sees any point in making it a pleasant experience for the tourist dollar. Gee, Canada, I am coming to your country to spend MY money there! Holy smokes. Maybe I'll just keep my money on this side of the border or save it for a more welcoming country.
Re:US citizens will be next? (Score:1, Insightful)
Japan is far more ethnically homogeneous and it's unsurprising that there was minimal protest to laws which affect non-ethnically Japanese. The US is quite a different case.
Re:Great... How much longer till 1984? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Getting worse than the old USSR? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Like it or not, the bill of rights doesn't apply to non-citizens."
Where in the bill of rights does it say that?
Re:Getting worse than the old USSR? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, it does! The Constitution applies to the U.S. government, stating what it may and may not do to or for ANYONE.
In the few cases where the Constitution means for something to apply only to citizens, it is spelled out quite clearly (things like voting, being eligible for the presidency, etc).