Personal patches

[Paul Robinson]

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.)

>{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.

>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. 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?

>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.

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, 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.

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.

>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? And that it is not trivial to defeat 
these fingerprinting systems if they wish to? 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..."

-- 
Paul Robinson