January 6, 2004
Randy Paul, just back from Brazil, has some perspective on the Brazilian order to fingerprint visiting Americans. I have to admit the concerns about potential damage to Brazilian tourism in the summertime took me by surprise... I guess it's just another sign of the tremendous power the US has in acting unilaterally, and the corresponding resentment it can (and should) elicit.
By the way, it's still not clear to me why citizens of some countries don't have to be fingerprinted, and how they chose which countries are which. Surely we're more likely to see terrorists bearing legitimate British or French passports than Brazilian.
It should be pointed out that the shoe-bomber held a British passport.
I'm usually against invasive security systems. I don't know that this is invasive. If the system is swift and efficient (and really does only add 15 seconds per person), I'm all in favor of this particular system of fingerprints and facial recognition. I don't agree with exempting anyone. Why not check U.S. Passport holders as well?
It should be pointed out that the shoe-bomber held a British passport.
Exactly. I don't necessarily think keeping track of visitors is a bad thing either, although I do wish there were better ways to do this from a technology standpoint - fingerprints seems so antiquated.
From what I understand, the goal is to use digital fingerprint systems which are pretty good at what they do.
Phase two is to incorporate facial recognition technology which measures several things like the distance from the bottom of your nose to the top of your lip and the shape of your eye. It doesn't work well casually in a crowd, but if you have someone stare into a camera for a second or two, it's accurate.
Both are relatively old technologies (digital fingerprints older) that have been enhancedand made more reliable. It's pretty hard to change your fingerprints. You can burn them off with heat or acid, but having no fingerprint is pretty suspicious.
I know about digital fingerprinting technology... I just think using a biometric where you don't have to physically touch the person would be more efficient. I guess this is out of the questions though because we're path dependent on the huge fingerprint libraries around the country.
But you don't have to touch the person. The person has to touch their finger to a plastic pad. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you?
Facial recognition just requires a carefully alighned picture, and retinal scans are also very quick. I was fingerprinted digitally a couple months ago and it took like 10 minutes. Maybe they've streamlined the process in airports, but it still seems like an awful hassle. Better than ink fingerprints, yes, but still a big imposition.
Oh also they did have to touch my hand to fingerprint me - if you don't roll your finger properly, the print will be incomplete, and most folks (me incl) aren't properly trained to do this themselves...
Interesting. I've seen some systems before and never had to roll the finger. Maybe you were on an older system or a consumer system?
I found an interesting round-up of the technologies in use here. Sounds like the system you were on was a Frustrated Total Internal Reflection system and not one of the newer Ultrasound systems. I don't know which system the government proposes using.
The big problem may be that even highly accurate systems will give only 97-98% accuracy which means 2% of the reads will be problematic. Crossing it with teh facial match should help prevent the thousands and thousands of false positives or false negatives that 2% represents.
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