More on that fingerprinting proposal

[redbird]

(This is a duplicate of what I just posted to my Weblog, because yonmei and brisingamen have had discussions of this in their journals)

Bruce Schneier explains why
fingerprinting visitors to the US will not make us safe.

Security is a trade-off. When deciding whether to implement a security measure, we must balance the costs against the benefits. Large-scale fingerprinting is something that doesn't add much to our security against terrorism and costs an enormous amount of money that could be better spent elsewhere. Allocating the funds on compiling, sharing and enforcing the terrorist watch list would be a far better security investment. As a security consumer, I'm getting swindled....

It's bad civic hygiene to build an infrastructure that can be used to facilitate a police state.

Comments

[peake.livejournal.com]

Allocating funds to the terrorist watch list also seems like a poor use of resources, given that US intelligence has been so bad. The number of wrong identifications is legion. Chinese grandmothers and newborn infants have been identified as potential arab terrorists. Anybody with a vaguely arabic name is automatically suspect, with no regard to the fact that the vast majority of people of arab origin are opposed to terrorism (a proportion that is slowly but steadily decreasing as a direct result of American insensitivity). Correct use of intelligence is a slow and painstaking affair, and in these circumstances usually results in information being analysed too late to do anything about it. Intelligence is not the wisest course in these matters. Intelligence, for instance, did not stop someone getting on a plane at Washington with a pocket full of bullets. (As brisingamen remarked, of course he got through US security. He was leaving the country, wasn't he?) Basic old fashioned security procedures (of the sort that do not inconvenience the majority of passengers or add inordinately to the length of their journey, or treat them like criminals before they have done anything) were all it took to catch the guy when he'd landed in London. One has to ask: which is the more sensible use of a budget?