Personal patches

[Allan Bowhill]

On  0, Paul Robinson <paul at iconoplex.co.uk> wrote:
:Allan Bowhill wrote:
:
:>How so? There is nothing illegitmate, arbitrary, illegal, secret or
:>repressive about requiring fingerprints and photos of visitors who come
:>across our international borders. It is necessary record-keeping.
:>
:When they came and took the liberty of tourists, I didn't defend them 
:because I was not a tourist.... (etc.)

Your right to convenient passage as a visitor do not override our
right to take measures to protect our own safety and security.

:>{Personally I hope genetic fingerprinting ultimately replaces this
:>system. This method of identification has proven indispensable in
:>catching criminals who would otherwise have gone unnoticed. It works.
:
:It worked in a single case you can cite here. Plus, the case you cite 
:does not concern a tourist to my knowledge, who therefore would not have 
:been fingerprinted at customs. Therefore, it's not only a sole case, 
:it's irrelevant. You're also missing the point that defeating electronic 
:fingerprint scanners is relatively trivial.

It has worked not only in a single case, but in many cases, tourists,
terrorists, serial killers, and freeing innocent people who were wrongfully
convicted.

The area of genetic testing has signifcant merit, although you appear
not to accept this.

:>Again, why should we trust?
:>
:
:Well, quite right. Thankfully for me you don't. Nobody travelling into 
:the US with an EU passport, or probably even just on a flight from the 
:EU, is going to get fingerprinted. Fortunately for the terrorists, most 
:of their cells planning attacks against the US are reportedly inside the 
:EU. 

I heard that Brits are exempt from fingerprinting. I hope this changes.
Simply out of fairness to everyone else.

:As making EU citizens do the fingerprint thing would grind all 
:international airports to a halt and probably impact heavily on US 
:export business (due to EU businessmen getting uppity), can I just ask - 
:what's the point of having this system?

The U.S. economy, when healthy, relies on %75 internal spending. 
If EU businessmen have a problem with this, they can go fish.

I doubt the EU will impose trade sanctions, or sacrifice good business
for the sake of a few irate travelers.

:>No organization (or nation) with plenty to lose will base it's practices
:>on institutionalized trust. It's always institutionalized mistrust that
:>makes it possible to conduct business. Like with banks.
:>
:
:Institutionalized (sic) mistrust. I like that phrase. It sums up North 
:America so well. Claim liberty and freedom, but whatever you do, make 
:sure the Government suspects EVERYBODY! And before you think I'm 
:US-bashing, my Father is a US Citizen. He would agree you're talking 
:rubbish.

So what. My Father is a British Citizen, and he thought we should have
dropped every nuke we had on Afghanistan. He would agree you're talking
trash. That doesn't make his hypothetical views relevant to the
discussion.

:You're also forgetting when you criticise our criticism that many people 
:commenting on all this here, from the EU, have lived with terrorism on 
:their own soil for many, many years - you guys are new to this, 

We are not new to this, as you seem to believe. Terrorism, Piracy and
Organized Crime are all intertwined. We have dealt with all of them in
our history. Addressing problems related to international piracy and
felonies is part of the responsibility of government, and is coded into
our constitution.

:whereas 
:the IRA have almost killed me (and several hundred others) on two 
:occasions with bombs in central Manchester when I was a teenager. I'm 
:sure there are people here from Ireland, France, Spain, Greece, Turkey, 
:Cyprus, etc. who can recount similar tales. Generally, we know what does 
:work, what doesn't work, what is just hype and what is a genuine 
:anti-terrorist measure.

I'm sorry to hear you were almost killed. I don't know much about the
particulars of your domestic terrorism problems, but I am under the
impression that Britain's handling of it is somewhat less than
exemplary.

I don't think stake-knife solutions and army collusion with terrorists
will work here.

:This fingerprint system will never catch a terrorist, but will create 
:even more bad feeling to the US and its citizens, unfortunately. Pity, 
:because generally I quite like the US and it's people. Terrible choice 
:in politicians however. *AWFUL* choice in Presidents.

Obviously nothin' but love ...

:>It's anybody's guess without statistics. 
:>
:Which would be useless anyway.
:
:>The point is to identify and catch people posing as travelers who
:>are known to be terrorists, or associated with terrorism. If the
:>system helps law enforcement catch other people on the lam, then
:>more power to it.
:>
:
:Right, so you think the FBI and CIA already have every terrorist's 
:fingerprint on file already do you? 

They have some, and will get more with the help of this system. If
the terrorists decide not to show up for their flights, fine. All
the better. They can stay home and blow themselves up.

:And that it is not trivial to defeat 
:these fingerprinting systems if they wish to? 

Not trivial, but possible. All the more reason to go with genetic
sampling.

:Or is it just so that 
:after the event they can say "well, we almost caught them, and look, the 
:system only cost us a few billion dollars..."

As far as national defense is concerned, it comes at a price. If it's
money rather than lives, let it be money.

-- 
Allan Bowhill
abowhill at blarg.net

Dealing with failure is easy: work hard to improve.  Success is also
easy to handle: you've solved the wrong problem.  Work hard to
improve.
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