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

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

No - I have a US visa (issued in 98), and thus had to be fingerprinted when i entered the US last week. Since I'll be entering the US again on Monday, on my way back from seeing purplejavatroll in Canada, I'll get a fairly quick check on how repeatable their fingerprint systems are.

If they're not reliable, I hope I won't be disappeared into the anti-terrorist camps...