Visitors to USA to be fully fingerprinted!

[Dukey]

Hey ASFers!
Just came across this gem and wondered what you guys thought of this action by the US.

Is it OK?? Do they really need this to catch all those millions of terrorists....
Or is it just over-the-top paranoia/scare mongering??

I wasn't aware that partial finger printing was already standard either.

Customs to collect visitors' 10 prints
Full sets allow better anti-terrorism checks
By Mimi Hall
USA TODAY
Foreigners coming to the USA will soon be required to have 10 fingerprints scanned as part of a new government anti-terrorist effort, the Homeland Security Department says.
The plan for Customs and Border Protection officers to collect more biometric information from foreigners is one phase of a long-awaited upgrade to a border-security program put in place after 9/11. The security program, known as US-VISIT, aims to give government agents a better idea of who is coming into the country and catch people with forged passports. The federal government has spent $1.7 billion on the program.
Foreigners were previously required to get just two of their prints scanned when they arrived at a checkpoint. Upgrading the system to 10 fingerprints will enable more thorough checking against terrorist watch lists and databases of criminals and illegal immigrants.

For my part - I can say that the one time I visited the USA a few years back (Flew into San Fran) - the US customs made me feel like a criminal simply because I didn't have the exact street address of my accommodation - as it had been booked by a friend who was to meet me at the airport. .. can't remember being finger printed though?
Of course those guys were just doing their job - but unfortunately they had to be 'smart-arsed' about it and gave me a hard time. While waiting in the 'Secondary Customs room' I witnessed the same rude treatment of many foreigners - most in a worse position than myself due to language difficulties. Some were very old and frail, confused and crying.

Now - this doesn't reflect on the US population as a whole - on a personal level I believe they are the friendliest and most generous people in the world.... But the 'culture of suspicion' in customs etc, where everyone is a potential terrorist, seems to be way over the top to me....

Any thoughts??

 

[gordon2007]

It's not just the USA that does this. Japan and a few other countries too. But as usual, the USA gets all the notice about it. It really is a "damned if you damned if you don't" over there on a lot of issues.

Hey ASFers!
Just came across this gem and wondered what you guys thought of this action by the US.

Is it OK?? Do they really need this to catch all those millions of terrorists....
Or is it just over-the-top paranoia/scare mongering??

I wasn't aware that partial finger printing was already standard either.

For my part - I can say that the one time I visited the USA a few years back (Flew into San Fran) - the US customs made me feel like a criminal simply because I didn't have the exact street address of my accommodation - as it had been booked by a friend who was to meet me at the airport. .. can't remember being finger printed though?
Of course those guys were just doing their job - but unfortunately they had to be 'smart-arsed' about it and gave me a hard time. While waiting in the 'Secondary Customs room' I witnessed the same rude treatment of many foreigners - most in a worse position than myself due to language difficulties. Some were very old and frail, confused and crying.

Now - this doesn't reflect on the US population as a whole - on a personal level I believe they are the friendliest and most generous people in the world.... But the 'culture of suspicion' in customs etc, where everyone is a potential terrorist, seems to be way over the top to me....

Any thoughts??

 

[numbercruncher]

I remember years ago I had to go to the US embassy in Sydney to collect a multiple entry visa ...

Anyway I had a bag with me with toiletries in it, they made me spray all these items on my skin before allowing entry to demonstrate it wasnt any sort of chemical weapon, nutters lol.

 

[coolcricket]

Hey ASFers!
Just came across this gem and wondered what you guys thought of this action by the US.

Is it OK?? Do they really need this to catch all those millions of terrorists....
Or is it just over-the-top paranoia/scare mongering??

I wasn't aware that partial finger printing was already standard either.

For my part - I can say that the one time I visited the USA a few years back (Flew into San Fran) - the US customs made me feel like a criminal simply because I didn't have the exact street address of my accommodation - as it had been booked by a friend who was to meet me at the airport. .. can't remember being finger printed though?
Of course those guys were just doing their job - but unfortunately they had to be 'smart-arsed' about it and gave me a hard time. While waiting in the 'Secondary Customs room' I witnessed the same rude treatment of many foreigners - most in a worse position than myself due to language difficulties. Some were very old and frail, confused and crying.

Now - this doesn't reflect on the US population as a whole - on a personal level I believe they are the friendliest and most generous people in the world.... But the 'culture of suspicion' in customs etc, where everyone is a potential terrorist, seems to be way over the top to me....

Any thoughts??

I don't think it is over the top, if it helps to prevent another 9/11.

It's not like they are sending you to an offshore military base and locking you up.

 

[Junior]

I've been there a couple of times recently and was fingerprinted on both occasions. It's no big deal, only takes 5-10 seconds. Doing all ten fingers is pretty full on though.

 

[Dukey]

It's not just the USA that does this. Japan and a few other countries too. But as usual, the USA gets all the notice about it. It really is a "damned if you damned if you don't" over there on a lot of issues.

Must be new in Japan too - cause I've never been finger printed there.

Just seems to me a bit like a redneck answering the door of his shack.... with a loaded shotgun pointed in the face of the visitor.... " whadda you wornt??"

Once I got through customs - I actually asked an airport guard ..." excuse me - where is the bathroom" (I even said bathroom - not 'toilet')...
The guy turned to me with his hand moving down onto his gun!! He hesitated before pointing in the general direction. said nothing.
To me it was like a lesson in 'how to create terrorists 101".

ie. What goes around, comes around...If you treat people like dogs - sooner or later they will act like dogs... certainly they will remember - as I have.

anyway - my I guess.

 

[Dukey]

I don't think it is over the top, if it helps to prevent another 9/11.

It's not like they are sending you to an offshore military base and locking you up.

Hopefully the finger printing will remove the possibility of mistaken identity... but then again - data can always be hacked &/or manipulated.

& how many actual terrorists do they have finger prints of anyway? Maybe they have Osama's prints from previous dodgy dealings but how many... really?

 

[coolcricket]

Hopefully the finger printing will remove the possibility of mistaken identity... but then again - data can always be hacked &/or manipulated.

& how many actual terrorists do they have finger prints of anyway? Maybe they have Osama's prints from previous dodgy dealings but how many... really?

Quite possibly incase they need to track down a terrorist once he is inside the US....

 

[sam76]

Must be new in Japan too - cause I've never been finger printed there.

Once I got through customs - I actually asked an airport guard ..." excuse me - where is the bathroom" (I even said bathroom - not 'toilet')...
The guy turned to me with his hand moving down onto his gun!! He hesitated before pointing in the general direction. said nothing.
To me it was like a lesson in 'how to create terrorists 101".

ie. What goes around, comes around...If you treat people like dogs - sooner or later they will act like dogs... certainly they will remember - as I have.

anyway - my I guess.

This is taken from a Gaijin email I subscribe to in Japan.

Some interseting points about the "process"

+++ WHAT'S NEW

Back in early October (TT-440) we talked about the coming
changes at Immigration, where the authorities have decided
in their wisdom that every foreigner in the land except
those who are third generation Koreans and Taiwanese,
diplomats, US soldiers, and kids, will be subject to
anti-terrorist biometric checks at the airport every time
we come into Japan. Since writing about that, we have had
lots of email and have been following the situation pretty
closely. Many thanks to all those people dropping us notes
about the changes as they have been happening.

We'll say up front that the proposed measures have been an
unmitigated public relations disaster for the Japanese
government and the Justice Ministry in particular. Although
the basic idea was to cooperate with the USA and other
nations to try to catch potential terrorists at the
borders, the measures have in fact proven to be disjointed,
unorganized, and ultimately unworkable. They have also
managed to infuriate pretty much every long-term,
tax-paying, foreign resident in Japan.


As many readers will already know, the Immigration folks
have decided to put in place a pre-registration system and
an "automatic" gate at Narita, so that permanent residents
and others with re-entrant visas will be able to by-pass
the tourist lines so long as they are pre-registered. You
can apparently pre-register either at the Tokyo
Immigration Bureau at Konan, inconvenient at the best of
times, or at Narita Airport.

The pre-registration counters will be at the South Wing of
Terminal 1 and South Side of Terminal 2. Note that the
opening times at Narita are limited to 9.00am-5.00pm. So
it's probably a good idea to go early. There is no
indication of how long the pre-registration process takes,
but comments we've heard so far are a few minutes if there
is no queue.

However, having said that, since literally tens of
thousands of people with re-entry visas will be leaving for
Christmas, you should leave plenty of time to get the
pre-registration done. For documentation you just need the
application form (presumably they'll give it to you) and
your up-to-date passport.

Now, if you happen to be using an airport other than
Narita, including Haneda, Nagoya, and Osaka, there will be
no automatic gates, and thus pre-registration isn't going
to do you much good. We can see this riling a lot of
foreign business people who have picked Japan for lifestyle
but who frequently travel to China and elsewhere in Asia
for business. For those people, moving to Singapore right
now has to look pretty good. It seems that the Japanese
government isn't really that interested in foreign
investment after all...

Now for those of you used to the Japanese floating new laws
and changing them after feeling the heat from the public,
there is some hope. We have heard through a well-placed
friend that the Immigration senior management are surprised
at the amount of negative reaction by the foreign
community. While their being surprised shows just how out
of touch they are, in any case we heard that Immigration
may in fact consider exempting permanent residents from the
re-entry procedure after-all. If they do this, at least
they'll be bringing themselves back in line with the USA,
where this whole biometric fiasco started in the first
place. There, the green card holders are allowed to enter
immigration through the US Citizen lines.

As the procedures have started to unfold (why do we get the
sense that they're making this up as they go along?), there
has been plenty of newspaper reader feedback in the Daily
Yomiuri and other foreign press. You have the Japan
apologists stating, "Well, these measures aren't so bad,
what's a little fingerprinting and eye scanning every now
and again if it keeps the country safe?" through to "Oh,
those whiney foreigners, if they don't like it, let them go
home."

The fact is that the fingerprinting and eye scanning really
are just an irritating inconvenience. What is making people
mad is how the government has decided that foreigners
living in Japan for decades, and in a number of cases those
who were even born here, are now lumped in with tourists
coming in for a week on the way to China or elsewhere. This
seemingly insignificant rule change has woken up a lot of
resentment over how Japan treats its foreign residents in
general.

Getting past the feelings of shabby treatment, you then get
to a more disturbing situation -- what happens to the data
after it is collected? At the end of October, we attended
an Amnesty International Japan press conference, where a
prominent leader of the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU), Barry Steinhardt, related what is done with the
data collected in the USA's US-VISIT program.

He made some very interesting points. Firstly, that the
terrorist alert database being used by the USA contains
750,000 names -- an order of magnitude larger than the
actual number of likely terrorists in the world --
meaning that there are a lot of people on that list who
shouldn't be there.

Secondly, the database has been proven many times to be
flawed thanks to its very superficial data. Essentially,
any person with a suspicious first name/last name, like
that of Dr. Robert J. Johnson, is flagged at the port of
entry and they are regularly dragged off for grilling.
Treatment like this of innocent people has naturally
caused tourism to the USA as a percentage of the global
travel market to fall -- in fact by 35% since 1992. Japan
can look forward to much the same result.

Thirdly, although no one has admitted as such, the ACLU
suspects from recent cases involving activists prevented
from entering Canada, that the USA is now sharing its
database with other nations.

The announcements by Immigration say that the new biometric
checks are being put in place to detect known terrorists
as they enter the country. However, Japan doesn't possess
its own list of foreign terrorists, mainly because there
hasn't been an incident of foreign terrorism on Japanese
soil (well, OK, North Korean abductions, maybe) since WWII.
Thus, for them to correlate tourists entering the country,
they'll have to borrow someone else's list. The ACLU and
Amnesty are hinting that it will be the faulty US list.
Too bad if your name happens to match one of the
750,000... Any Bob Johnsons among our readers? Let's hope
"Taru Suzuki" or a similarly popular Japanese name doesn't
suddenly make it to the list.

What is interesting, too, is that while Japanese names and
biometrics are not on the Japanese database because the
electorate wouldn't stand for it, for those Japanese
nationals traveling to the USA and UK, their data is
indeed being captured -- and it is only a matter of time
before this data is fed back to Immigration here in Japan.
This smacks very much of a back door effort by the powers
that be to collect global data -- and there isn't much the
civil rights people can do about it.

Then we heard another interesting tidbit. Now you might
think that with all the hot technology for accurately
scanning fingerprints and eyes, this data would be
whizzing back in real time to some massive Interpol-like
database, and that if there was a match then the
Immigration officer's screen would start flashing red and
bells would start clanging.

Nope, nothing like that. What we heard is that the data is
"batched" and sent to a screening center for analysis.
Apparently it takes up to 24 hours to turn the data around!
That's probably just the right amount of time for an
earnest terrorist to catch a bus over to the Tokyo Stock
Exchange, let off some sort of device, and high-tail it
back overseas.

So what we have here is a FUBAR situation of the highest
order. 1) A law that no one really thought too hard about,
but which will irritate the hell out of a lot of
tax-paying, law-abiding permanent residents. 2) A computer
database that is riddled with inaccuracies and is being
adopted to buttress the Japanese screening effort. Let's
hope it gets some important Middle-eastern customer of
Mitsui or Marubeni locked up for a week or two until the
authorities find out that the database is unreliable. 3)
A processing system that is so slow that a real terrorist
could enter and exit the country without being detected in
time.

There is a petition that you can sign to protest the new
procedures. The URL is:
www.ipetitions.com/petition/fingerprints-japan/index.html.
This petition will be presented to the General Affairs
Division, Immigration Bureau, at the Ministry of Justice.

Also, we can recommend the website of Debito Arudou, which
has an excellent running log of developments on
fingerprinting and similar human rights issues. You can
find it at: http://www.debito.org/index.php/?p=708

We'd be interested in hearing the experiences of people who
have pre-registered on November 20th, and/or who passing
back into Japan as permanent residents.

 

[gordon2007]

Interpreting a customs guard to be reaching for his gun is very subjective. I've been through customs there far too many times to even remember but never ever once have I seen them reach for a gun. I've seen people screaming at them and not reaching for a gun. To say what comes around goes around...what did the USA do to osama to make him want to kill 3000+ lives and cause caos on world markets. NOT JUST US CITIZENS and US MARKETS. This is very quicking turning into either a pro or against the USA thread.

Once I got through customs - I actually asked an airport guard ..." excuse me - where is the bathroom" (I even said bathroom - not 'toilet')...
The guy turned to me with his hand moving down onto his gun!! He hesitated before pointing in the general direction. said nothing.
To me it was like a lesson in 'how to create terrorists 101".


anyway - my I guess.

 

[BlingBling]

At least in the US it's only the tourists.
Green card holders don't need it.

I'm a permanent resident here in Japan and have been here for 10 years.
I have a Japanese wife and 2 sons who hold dual passports.
I will no longer be able to line up with my family and will have to join the same long long like for tourists to have this crap done.
I pay tax, contribute to the community but these wankers here still think I'm a terrorist. They haven't yet realised that the most dangerous terrorists are actually the crazed bults that are still going strong in this country.

My wife holds a permo visa in Oz and they would never be subject to this crap. Because they are treated like Australians.

 

[Sean K]

If you've got something to hide it's a concern.

 

[disarray]

the elites in the US are doing their level best to try and turn the place into a police state.

 

[Dukey]

Mmm interesting whats happening in Japan. Maybe I've come home at the right time. Residents with proper ID shouldn't have to go through that!!

As for being subjective about the guard reaching for his gun... well ultimately .. yes it is, but I saw what I saw and I saw it clearly. Scared the hell out of me. Now maybe he's the only airport guard there who would do this, but you have to wonder.

I had no intention to start a pro/anti US argument.
As I said I generally like US citizens. -they are generous and warm friendly folk.. but this 'officil' suspicion is too much for me...

where will it end?

maybe in Disarray's police state?

 

[Doris]

Three years ago I flew to Orange County for a few days then to Calgary for a week. Leaving Calgary for a few more weeks in California, my thumb and forefinger prints were digitally taken and my retina photographed.

A year ago, after a few days in OC, I had two months in Calgary before a flight out to Huston. (Caribbean cruise) My thumb and forefinger prints were digitally scanned... and my retina. Yes, they were on record. But returning from the cruise ship, NO security checks were made.

The swipe cards on the cruise, when you left the ship and when you returned from the day in a port, had one's photo on it so they checked you looked to be the person registered.

I did get a surprise when Huston airport was self-check-in and a swipe of my credit card gave me my flight confirmation and boarding pass. And my luggage tags. My OC friends had bought my ticket so there was NO record of my c/card with the flight.

Scary! Big brother is watching.

 

[Nyden]

Well just darn. How am I supposed to murder all those people the next time I go to America? How am I meant to commit fraud, or blow up a building & get away with it?

Not to mention, all my many other past crimes may catch up with me!



In all seriousness; what is it people fear about having the government hold their specifics on file? If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide. Some people are just so paranoid, makes me laugh.

 

[roland]

Well, you could always make your own http://www.ehow.com/how_2122642_fake-fingerprints.html

 

[Doris]

The swipe cards on the cruise, when you left the ship and when you returned from the day in a port, had one's photo on it so they checked you looked to be the person registered.

Scary! Big brother is watching.

Hmmm.. I should clarify...

Your photo was digitally stored in the magnetic strip of the ship's ID card. It showed up on the screen for the security guard to check, when you swiped it, as you were re-embarking.

 

[numbercruncher]

Hmmm.. I should clarify...

Your photo was digitally stored in the magnetic strip of the ship's ID card. It showed up on the screen for the security guard to check, when you swiped it, as you were re-embarking.

Thats a good thing thou, dont want just any psycho walking onto your cruise and sinking it in the middle of no where to take out a few thousand heathen westerners