All Britons visiting US to be fingerprinted

[bobhope]

Sorry if posted before:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world...984496,00.html

<The Observer has established that under new plans to combat terrorism, the US government will demand that visitors have all 10 fingers scanned when they enter the country. The information will be shared with intelligence agencies, including the FBI, with no restrictions on their international use.>


Big brother is watching

[wendigo100]

If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to be afraid of.

[DS23]

will the scanner detect cocaine?

bit of a worry for dublin city researchers...

[tim123]

What does "The Observer has established " mean?

This new 'fact' was openely announced to the world at least a week ago.

The Observer did nothing to discover this little snippet, except read a press release that everybody has access to.

tim

[lilelvis2000]

I seem to recall hearing about this in Canada over four years ago. I think they have been taking the finger prints of any suspicious characters (anyone with a beard with a unpronouncable name who are decendant from a middle east or south asian country) for many years now.

Does this new announcement mean that everyone will be fingerprinted? Or just Brits who the US fears may be bringing their brand of chavism, soccer hooliganism and general rudeness to America's shores.

[Nicky G]

Why can't they just have it for Pakistanis? I mean let's face it, that's who it's directed at. Why do the real English have to suffer?

[The Lone Gunman]

They still seem to think the terrorists are going to fly in.

Nobody is watching the back door.

Any self respecting terroroist can fly into Mexico (I think with no checks) then simply drive into the US with a waggon/camper/whatever full of explosives.

[Nicky G]

Carefully forgetting that shoe bomber nutter of course...

He was ethnic and looked Muslim.

[DodgyAgent]

What if you only have 8 fingers & two thumbs?

Will that prove a problem?

Then again, all those with 12 digits ought to be ok...

were you born in Norfolk by any chance?

[Not So Wise]

US has been finger printing for a while, the expansion to all fingers is not very disturbing beyond the fact that they can no longer pretend that they are doing it for identification purposes but rather for an "aliens" database (aka all foreigners considered criminals unless proven otherwise)

What is really disturbing is that they will now be sharing that info with the FBI who in turn will share it with other countries (and knowing the US private companies), which in turn will allow those countries/companies to obtain citizens fingerprint via the "backdoor" bypassing their own legal checks and balances

It is past time that the UK and the rest of the EU follows Brazil's lead by fingerprinting all US citizens (and only US citizens) who enter the country, not to stop terrorists (because the US doing this does not either) but rather to get the US to stop this bulltulip