But I was reading a [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/3368839.stm]BBC board and was amazed at how this new policy has angered so many people. What excactly is the US doing wrong here? I read alot of people screaming about human rights, but im not sure where the right to visit another country is guranteed by anything!
Personally I see no problem with this at all. If I was to visit Brazil and they did this to me…so? Im the guest, if you want to picture and fingerprint me to protect your citizens, knock yourself out. I have nothing to hide. If I dont like how you treat me, I just wont come back.
Does anyone think this new policy will seriously effect the US tourist industry? Or is this just another excuse for more US bashing??
If your country is on this list, you’re not a terrorist.
Guess the Axis of Evil is bigger than we were previously told.
I think the whole program of fingerprinting and photographing at ports of entry is just more scaremongering and another “reason” to appropriate more redundant funding for the USDHS that won’t make anyone safer from terrorism. Who seriously believes they can effectively scan and screen the numbers (28 million/year) they’re talking about?
So the system kinda relies on all the terrorists and potential terrorists of the world volunteering their fingerprints for the “arrest me now” database? :rolleyes:
Well from the CNN article they say this should only effect around 5million VISA visitors a year. Which while a large number is more manageable than 28million.
Baby steps.
From the linked article Ridge said “first significant step in a series of steps”.
It’s not like someday they’ll say “We’ve won the war on terror! We no longer need to fingerprint anyone!” or “Our databases have too much information on incoming visitors. It’s a shame we threw that much money at a system that was so easy to work around”.
/half-hearted joke/ Can I just sign up for my serial number tattoo and tracking implant now? /half-hearted joke/
Well … I’m a Brazilian and we certainly don’t like to be labeled as “terrorist possible”. Though why Brunei and Singapore are free is beyond me. So we now smudge american fingers with ink. (yep we don’t have homeland security budgets it seems… )
Once more it stinks of bad diplomacy...
As for fighting terrorism it won’t do much. Naturally a terrorist might come to Brazil and apply for Brazilian citizenship to try and get into the US. If the US had his fingerprints beforehand it would help… don’t think they will. Unless they have some crazy image ID software.
Overall it seems like a nice way to avoid illegal immigration. Which the US has the right to monitor… they just don’t need to label it homeland security.
I don’t see it as insulting or against people’s rights. I just see it as stupid and useless.
The guys that organised an action like 9/11 were a lot of things but they weren’t stupid. There are a lot of angry fundamentalist Muslims in Europe who won’t be hindered by these checks. Also passports are probably not too hard to get for the enterprising and well funded terrorist.
It will use up valuable resources and still leave huge gaps. For it to possibly have any real meaning it would need to be a 100% affair.
It’s BS window dressing IMO. Keep the people feeling that’s something’s being done while keeping them on their toes as to the ongoing need for support for the “War of Terror”[sup]tm[/sup]
Isn’t there good sense in fingerprinting and photographing everyone who passes an international border anywhere? The requirement for Passports means that people don’t have the right to cross boarders annonymously anyway, so this is just an increase in allready existing security. I don’t though believe the data collection should be limited to travellers from only a subset of countries, though.
Of course, only those arriving by airplane are fingerprinted and not those arriving by car because everybody knows terrorists would never arrive by car.
I’m with yojimbo on this, it is mostly a waste of money and resources which could be better employed elsewhere.
You can bet anyone arriving on a cruise ship will escape this watertight security control, too. Cause no terrorists travel in style, apart from the business-class highjackers of 9/11…
Reciprocity is often used in international relations and countries often do grant exemptions or impose duties on this account. When the USA raises its visa fees for foreign nationals many countries will immediately raise their fees for Americans. The USA also does the same thing with a number of things like exemptions for diplomats.
Personally I think it is a good thing because it makes people be consistent. I should not complain of being fingerprinted when I go abroad and yet demand others be fingerprinted when they come to my country. The truth is that if any other country had started doing this other than the USA they would be roundly criticized in America. If 15 or 20 years ago China or the USSR were doing this the US government would hold it as an example of government control etc.
After reading the linked article, this one, and particularly this one, I made a couple of back-of-the-napkin calculations:
a) adding “10-15 seconds to the average one-minute processing time for each visitor” (CBP quote) will add about an hour and a quarter to the total processing time for a flight with 200 passengers. I note that Mexico and Canada are not listed as exempt, so unless informed otherwise, I’m assuming this would hold for overland entry points as well.
Actual delays will of course vary depending on how many customs officials are on duty. I am not overly optimistic, as I’ve read several press reports concerning a shortage of qualified inspection personnel, and a few recent horror stories, which I can’t seem to find at the moment, of passengers from arriving flights enduring hours-long delays without being allowed to use the toilets or even sit down.
b) the MSNBC article mentions that false hits in testing have been less than 0.1 percent. Admirable, but that would still mean that out of every one million visitors processed, up to 1,000 may be misidentified as potential risks. Thus at least several thousand innocent visitors per year are pretty much guaranteed to be refused entry for incorrect reasons. I also expect that they will be treated rather harshly due to a common belief that “it’s a computerized database, it can’t be wrong” . I’ve twice been interrogated, once rudely and once not, upon entry into the US (and I’m a citizen) because of an incorrect notation in the CBP’s database that my passport had been reported stolen, and there seems to be no mechanism in place to correct the erroneous information.
My conclusion: the new measures cannot help but have a negative effect on at least some visitors’ perceptions of the US.
How does fingerprinting and photographing help? Does the U.S. have a database of every known terrorist? Wouldn’t anyone who they’ve managed to fingerprint/photohgraph already be in good ol’ Guantanamo Bay? I predict a lot of false-postives if the U.S. uses data from much of the rest of the world which doesn’t have the necessary technology to have captured sufficiently accurate fingerprints.
Canadians do not generally need a visa to enter the United States at all.
Here’s the thing. Some folks in this forum will remember the complaints about the existing terror list – people with same or similar names were being harrassed, transcription errors recently led to flight delays, etc. This program will, over time, reduce that problem while more specifically identifying undesirables. Will it catch everyone? Of course it won’t. It’s just a step in a process.