fatbrit

paras 47-63

nettlebed

Thanks. looks interesting. I'll read it in detail this afternoon.

nettlebed

Yep, looks like Denial by RFE.

Brit3964

The question now is what status do those people have? If found not to be eligible as a USC, would they now be termed as illegal immigrants? It seems like the DoS are using a blanket denial via RFE. Scary stuff.

Steerpike

I agree it's a slippery slope argument, and thus not black/white. They already have a copy of your photo and your signature, so I can't see how different a fingerprint is. Neither makes much sense 'just in the passport', since they can be forged / inserted into the passport. They have to be checked against something to be useful as a 'verification check'.

Exit from, and re-entry to, the country would seem to be a privilege, not a right, and as such, demonstrating your right to enter seems reasonable. After all, there ARE many, many people who would like to enter and stay illegally if they could. The fact that you can walk across a land border so easily does make a mockery of the whole process, though...

nettlebed

There is an imponderable here, which is the general growing acceptance that the government has a right to track and identify and validate you whenever and wherever you are. As soon as this idea becomes entrenched in people's minds in one area, it's that little bit easier in other areas, and they it becomes easier for controlling politicians to pass legislation to make it mandatory to carry some form of identification document.

The greater the number of people who protest, the louder and the more frequently they do it, the harder it becomes to strip away the right to be left alone.

The US government technically governs with the consent of the governed. If people don't like what the government does, they have a right -- some would say a duty -- to protest loudly and frequently.

The "well, they have my fingerprints anyway, so what does it matter?" type of argument is pernicious, and acquiescence in it is acquiescence in the development of practices that can lead -- and in many occasions have led -- to a police or fascist state.

surly

We're talking about foreign nationals here not US citizens.
As far as I know US born citizens aren't required to give finger prints unless they are arrested for a crime.
If you're a foreign national you'll have to make you're choices if you object to being finger printed.

hobbes79

North Korea has that policy.

Just saying...

nettlebed

I suppose so, though the principle is the same: rights, unless defended, tend to be eroded by government actions. It is something that happens everywhere all the time to a greater or lesser extent.

Steerpike

I agree. But my preference is to focus on areas that matter. Entry to / exit from country are (for most of us, though sadly not for Manc!) infrequent events and often involve planes, which have at various times been hijacked (remember when THAT was the worst that could happen? ), and flown into buildings. So in this area, I'm willing to suffer inconvenience in the interest of security. In other areas, I'm less inclined to do so.

I believe that the right of the population to demonstrate is overly restricted (eg, at political conventions, etc). I object to the current govt's trampling of rights in the area of phone tapping without a warrant. I object to this govt. ignoring international treaties and using torture; I object to private businesses operating virtually without restriction and abusing my personal information; I object to many things that I feel are more important than being fingerprinted at the point of entry to the country (citizen or not - I just don't care).

Your argument is, if we allow 'this', then they will then do 'that'. There are just so many other things that bother me that I'd rather focus on.

hobbes79

They are for various jobs. My wife (a USC) had them taken when she worked at a child care facility. Ironically, all police officers have them taken.

The fact that finger print taking and being "arrested for a crime" is an immediate association by many is rather telling though and is part of, I'm sure, the disagreement by some with this move.

nettlebed

I might be less inclined to take issue with you about this if I believed that the actions of the TSA, for example, do increase security. In fact, I believe that they do not. That means that at best they are passively reducing security, by taking away money that might be better spent on, say, placing people trained in behavioral observation and assessment on random patrol in airports. But the current measures are worse that than, and actively reduce security, since they are a set of stereotypical behaviors that can be probed, tested and evaluated by potential attackers. By using knowledge gained from probes, it is feasible to postulate that attackers could make themselves less likely to be selected for heightened screening. The TSA is, in effect, showing it's hand to a certain extent.

When you add the economic costs as well, the overall cost to society is high, apart from some incidental benefits to, e.g., airside retailers.

Well, there are two of us, so we can each choose to focus on our own areas of interest

hobbes79

Indeed.

Prior to 9/11, the deadliest act of terrorism in the United States was carried out by Timothy McVeigh, a white natural born USC.

The purpose of expanding fingerprinting to green card holder is as follows according to a statement by the DHS: "Linking a person's biometric information to his or her travel documents reduces the risk that a traveler's identity or documents could be intentionally misused by someone attempting to gain entry into the United States."

I'm sorry to labor the point, but I still don't see why all US passport applicants shouldn't be finger printed from this point forward if that's the justification behind this move. To suggest USC's (or those pretending to be ones) don't pose a threat has largely been discounted by the events of April 19, 2005.

Since, and I'm pulling this stat out of my bottom somewhat, but the percentage of GC holders versus US citizens entering the US on any particular day is probably in the order of a couple of percent, the argument could in fact be made that all USCs should be finger printed upon entering the country and GC holders should be left alone.

As a side note, I don't recall the orchestrators of 9/11 having greencards. But McVeigh was definitely a US citizen...

nettlebed

Uhm, should that not be April 19, 1995?

But your points are very well taken.

And the fundamental problem that you touch on, and that most people in the government seem to ignore is the base rate fallacy. When you try to identify anything where its population is minute compared to the rest of the population (e.g. terrorist from non-terrorists) any errors in the identification process will tend to catch non-terrorists with a greater probability than terrorists. There is a good write up of this on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy

However, one should never overlook the possibility that the government paranoiacs truly believe that there are genuinely many more terrorists trying to knock on the doors of the US than there probably are in reality, thus reducing the effect of the fallacy.

Brit3964

Pretty much what's been happening with the No-Fly list "false-positives". Add to that the number of names being added all the time and you multiply the number of chances your name will appear on that list eventually.

All this terrorist talk can become a self-fulfilling prophecy in the end. You only have to look at the number of terrorists, those associated with it and those with criminal backgrounds that were caught as a result of the FBI name-check process. It's virtually none:

"But Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the House immigration subcommittee, said the number of immigrants who had ever been rejected solely as a result of an F.B.I. name check was “microscopic.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/wa...in&oref=slogin

Most get denied because of past immigration violations. A sledgehammer to crack a nut anyone?