I can’t imagine being very concerned unless it’s a full set of the quality that I’ve had to give for various background checks (just because it always seems to take 15 minutes).
I’m fairly sure I had to do a fingerprint of some kind for my passport and if so it only makes sense to grab a print on the way in. Or maybe that was something else… I can’t keep track of how many outfits have taken my prints.
Anyway - Yes, I would suffer the ignominy of a fingerprinting to get into a country that I wanted to enter.
As others have said, I’ve been printed for military and security purposes so it doesn’t bother me. I am not now, nor do I plan on becoming, a criminal/terrorist/mime so having my print on a database means nothing and could potentially be helpful if I’m in a plain crash or terrorist attack.
Besides, as long as it’s just a fingerprint I don’t mind. I’ll complain if they want the whole finger, though.
v. tr. 2. To experience; undergo: suffer a change in staff.
… 4. To permit; allow: “They were not suffered to aspire to so exalted a position as that of streetcar conductor” Edmund S. Morgan.
Fingerprinting is just another form of identification. Most people don’t mind identifying themselves, and I can’t see a good reason to be annoyed or upset about it.
Want to be a volunteet tutor through a California Dept. of Ed. program? - all ten fingertips and both hands. You’d also have to have your TB tests up to date. Which reminds me, mine is due.
I think things might be a little different for Americans, Isamu. It doesn’t strike me as a big deal, and I bet a lot of other people feel the same way. Many of us were fingerprinted for the first time as very small children - it was done at Kindergarten registration where I lived - as a tool for identifying kids (or their bodies) who have been kidnapped. Then, if you ever want to work in a school system, or even volunteer in one as of the late 90s, you need to be fingerprinted and have background checks done too. Ditto for some other professions too.
What I do find inconvenient is in NH towns will not share fingerprinting information, so I’ve had to do it two different times for different school systems - and the cost ($36 most recently) is paid by the person being fingerprinted not the school system. But for security? It’s not that big a deal. It’d be nice not to be charged extra for it, though.
In my opinion the difference is that this particular form of identification is one that I leave a copy of everywhere. It has a great potential for misuse. That said, I opted to use my fingerprint at a domestic flight in Sweden as an alternative to showing I.D. at the gate to prove I was the same guy who checked in my bag earlier. It didn’t save me any time at this semi-rural airport, but I just wanted to try out the technology. My curiousity where stronger than my (otherwise healhy) paranoia and principles of privacy in this case and it probably will if I’d were to visit the U.S.A.
For an extra sci-fi feeling, I’d like them to scan my whole hand with a sweeping blue light and an automatic voice welcoming me by name and telling me to step through a alphanumerically numbered door that opens with noisy hydraulics.
Personally, I don’t care. I’m sure that as many places as file fingerprints have mine on file. One more place ain’t gonna hurt. Frankly, the DNA thing, while a little creepy, isn’t really a bad idea…that is until they mix you up with some other sucker.
Eh, I already do the fingerprint thing on the back of the driver’s licence thing, one more isn’t going to bug me. Hubby has a good theory—“If a crime is committed and the cops might have me on a list of suspects, at least my fingerprints are on file and they can eliminate me right off.”
I recently had to give my fingerprints to do a one day clinical experience at a hospital, so one more set floating around out there isn’t going to be a big deal.
