Air America breaking news: "USA to fingerprint ALL visitors !!!"

"Marie Lewis" wrote in message
...


Please note that fingerprinting is not nearly as common in, for example,
the
UK, as in the USA.
Here, you have to be suspected of a crime to be foingerprinted, and if you
are innocent, those prints are destroyed.

I'm afraid the writing is on the wall for the UK

Already the police can take and retain DNA samples if they arrest you; these
samples are retained even if you're not subsequently charged with a crime.

Fingerprinting will probably come in with ID cards. I'd be very surprised if
the cards are not made compulsory as the police are bleating for this.

Brgds,

--
Peter X-Files Fan
Please Note: Emailed replies cc'd / bcc'd , containing HTML or attachments
auto-binned as spam

On 03 Apr 2004 16:30:43 GMT, (GeneJYao) wrote:

Why is Australia now included in the "fingerprint" list? I thought they
have biometric passports.

As for the person who said that US immigrations is faster than 99% of other
countries, I guess the other country he is comparing the US with is Japan since
that is the only country where I've had to wait longer than the US. Other than
that, the US is the longest and I've enterred 25 countries (and I'm a US
citizen who goes through the faster lines in US immigrations).

He said "customs" not immigration.

If he meant immigration, I agree with you about Japan, plus when I
flew Chicago-Glasgow about three years ago there was one inspector in
immigration to process all the non EU's in a 767. It took me about 30
minutes and I was near the front of the line.

I'm not sure what is going on in Narita but I think in most other
places immigration lines are less a function of the country than they
are of the airport. An airport like Glasgow that doesn't get many
international flights (in their case non-EU flights) won't be staffed
for peaks.

FWIW, at SFO on the Star Alliance side of the International terminal,
there are four 747's scheduled to arrive from Asia in a 20 minute
period in the morning. I went through that a week or so ago and the US
resident line was about 2 minutes. The visitors line was a bit longer
(maybe 10 people in front of each station) but didn't look too bad.

However, on the way to Singapore, I sat next to a Brit who was doing a
mileage run by flying LHR-SIN via ORD and SFO. He said on the way back
he was going through LAX just because of slow immigration at SFO. THen
he went back to sleep.

On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 18:43:34 +0200, Magda
wrote:

On Sat, 03 Apr 2004 16:29:44 +0200, in rec.travel.europe, AJC arranged some
electrons, so they looked like this :


... Having finger-prints taken for a driving licence? Maybe in Cuba, the
... former DDR, or some other 'big brother' regime, but certainly not in
... any free country. Finger-printing is for criminals.

I have had my 10 fingerprints taken when I got my first identity card at 18. That card had
a big print (including sides) of my right thumb right under my picture. I didn't feel I
was being treated as a criminal at all. I wasn't intending to get in trouble anyway, so I
was glad that if an identity mistake happened, the police already had my fingerprints and
could prove my innocence.

One shouldn't have to prove one's innocence, that should be the
accepted position until proved otherwise.
--==++AJC++==--

In rec.travel.usa-canada AJC wrote:

Having finger-prints taken for a driving licence? Maybe in Cuba, the
former DDR, or some other 'big brother' regime, but certainly not in
any free country. Finger-printing is for criminals.

So you must be familiar with the process.

Seriously, driver's licenses are used as ID in the US.

Try to think. Figure it out. Oh wait. Nex

In article ,
AJC wrote:

Having finger-prints taken for a driving licence? Maybe in Cuba, the
former DDR, or some other 'big brother' regime, but certainly not in
any free country. Finger-printing is for criminals.

Check up on Brazil, then. They were complaining about fingerprinting
people from Brazil coming into the US, but neglected to note that they
already fingerprint and photograph *all* of their own citizens.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

On Sat, 3 Apr 2004 17:30:05 +0000 (UTC), Alan Pollock
wrote:

In rec.travel.usa-canada AJC wrote:

Having finger-prints taken for a driving licence? Maybe in Cuba, the
former DDR, or some other 'big brother' regime, but certainly not in
any free country. Finger-printing is for criminals.

So you must be familiar with the process.

Seriously, driver's licenses are used as ID in the US.


And your point is what? Driving licences are used as a form of
identification in many countries whose governments don't keep a
database of innocent citizens' fingerprints.

--==++AJC++==--

"Magda" wrote in message
...

... Having finger-prints taken for a driving licence? Maybe in Cuba, the
... former DDR, or some other 'big brother' regime, but certainly not in
... any free country. Finger-printing is for criminals.

I have had my 10 fingerprints taken when I got my first identity card at
18. That card had
a big print (including sides) of my right thumb right under my picture. I
didn't feel I
was being treated as a criminal at all. I wasn't intending to get in
trouble anyway, so I
was glad that if an identity mistake happened, the police already had my
fingerprints and
could prove my innocence.

Dear Magda,

You're sure you don't mind if "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU" ?? What if your
employer or the AT&T's, Microsofts, Walmarts and Citigroups of this world
start fingerprinting or DNA-scanning you... you're sure you're "innocent"
enough to hand over your fingerprints to them ?
I just wonder is this a typical European concern or is it just a matter of
you being ignorant and naive ???

http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm
Feel free to have look, it's free !!! :

In the ramifications of party doctrine she had not the faintest
interest. Whenever he began to talk of the principles of Ingsoc,
doublethink, the mutability of the past, and the denial of objective
reality, and to use Newspeak words, she became bored and confused and said
that she never paid any attention to that kind of thing. One knew that it
was all rubbish, so why let oneself be worried by it? She knew when to cheer
and when to boo, and that was all one needed. If he persisted in talking of
such subjects, she had a disconcerting habit of falling asleep. She was one
of those people who can go to sleep at any hour and in any position. Talking
to her, he realized how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy
while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a way, the
world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable
of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant
violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what
was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events
to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane.
They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm,
because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass
undigested through the body of a bird. Part Two - Chapter 5

http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm

'We may be together for another six months -- a year -- there's no
knowing. At the end we're certain to be apart. Do you realize how utterly
alone we shall be? When once they get hold of us there will be nothing,
literally nothing, that either of us can do for the other. If I confess,
they'll shoot you, and if I refuse to confess, they'll shoot you just the
same. Nothing that I can do or say, or stop myself from saying, will put off
your death for as much as five minutes. Neither of us will even know whether
the other is alive or dead. We shall be utterly without power of any kind.
The one thing that matters is that we shouldn't betray one another, although
even that can't make the slightest difference.'
'If you mean confessing,' she said, 'we shall do that, right enough.
Everybody always confesses. You can't help it. They torture you.'
'I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do
doesn't matter: only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving
you -- that would be the real betrayal.'
She thought it over. 'They can't do that,' she said finally. 'It's the one
thing they can't do. They can make you say anything -- anything -- but they
can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you.'
'No,' he said a little more hopefully, 'no; that's quite true. They can't
get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when
it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them.'
He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy
upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still outwit
them. With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of
finding out what another human being was thinking. Perhaps that was less
true when you were actually in their hands. One did not know what happened
inside the Ministry of Love, but it was possible to guess: tortures, drugs,
delicate instruments that registered your nervous reactions, gradual
wearing-down by sleeplessness and solitude and persistent questioning.
Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by
enquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was
not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make?
They could not alter your feelings: for that matter you could not alter them
yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail
everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose
workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable. Part
Two - Chapter 7

http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm

The Ministry of Truth -- Minitrue, in Newspeak -- was startlingly
different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal
structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace,
300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to
read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans
of the Party: WAR IS PEACE - FREEDOM IS SLAVERY - IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
Part One - Chapter 1


http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm

Often they gave themselves up to daydreams of escape. Their luck would
hold indefinitely, and they would carry on their intrigue, just like this,
for the remainder of their natural lives. Or Katharine would die, and by
subtle manoeuvrings Winston and Julia would succeed in getting married. Or
they would commit suicide together. Or they would disappear, alter
themselves out of recognition, learn to speak with proletarian accents, get
jobs in a factory and live out their lives undetected in a back-street. It
was all nonsense, as they both knew. In reality there was no escape. Even
the one plan that was practicable, suicide, they had no intention of
carrying out. To hang on from day to day and from week to week, spinning out
a present that had no future, seemed an unconquerable instinct, just as
one's lungs will always draw the next breath so long as there is air
available.
Sometimes, too, they talked of engaging in active rebellion against the
Party, but with no notion of how to take the first step. Even if the
fabulous Brotherhood was a reality, there still remained the difficulty of
finding one's way into it. He told her of the strange intimacy that existed,
or seemed to exist, between himself and O'Brien, and of the impulse he
sometimes felt, simply to walk into O'Brien's presence, announce that he was
the enemy of the Party, and demand his help. Curiously enough, this did not
strike her as an impossibly rash thing to do. She was used to judging people
by their faces, and it seemed natural to her that Winston should believe
O'Brien to be trustworthy on the strength of a single flash of the eyes.
Moreover she took it for granted that everyone, or nearly everyone, secretly
hated the Party and would break the rules if he thought it safe to do so.
But she refused to believe that widespread, organized opposition existed or
could exist. The tales about Goldstein and his underground army, she said,
were simply a lot of rubbish which the Party had invented for its own
purposes and which you had to pretend to believe in. Times beyond number, at
Party rallies and spontaneous demonstrations, she had shouted at the top of
her voice for the execution of people whose names she had never heard and in
whose supposed crimes she had not the faintest belief. When public trials
were happening she had taken her place in the detachments from the Youth
League who surrounded the courts from morning to night, chanting at
intervals 'Death to the traitors!' During the Two Minutes Hate she always
excelled all others in shouting insults at Goldstein. Yet she had only the
dimmest idea of who Goldstein was and what doctrines he was supposed to
represent. She had grown up since the Revolution and was too young to
remember the ideological battles of the fifties and sixties. Such a thing as
an independent political movement was outside her imagination: and in any
case the Party was invincible. It would always exist, and it would always be
the same. You could only rebel against it by secret disobedience or, at
most, by isolated acts of violence such as killing somebody or blowing
something up. Part Two - Chapter 5

http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm

His eyes re-focused on the page. He discovered that while he sat
helplessly musing he had also been writing, as though by automatic action.
And it was no longer the same cramped, awkward handwriting as before. His
pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper, printing in large neat
capitals - DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER - DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER - DOWN WITH BIG
BROTHER - DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER - DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER - over and over
again, filling half a page.
He could not help feeling a twinge of panic. It was absurd, since the
writing of those particular words was not more dangerous than the initial
act of opening the diary, but for a moment he was tempted to tear out the
spoiled pages and abandon the enterprise altogether.
He did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless. Whether he
wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made
no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go
on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the
same. He had committed -- would still have committed, even if he had never
set pen to paper -- the essential crime that contained all others in itself.
Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be
concealed for ever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for
years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.
It was always at night -- the arrests invariably happened at night. The
sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights
glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast
majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply
disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the
registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your
one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished,
annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.
For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria. He began writing in a
hurried untidy scrawl:
-- theyll shoot me i dont care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i
dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the
neck i dont care down with big brother --
He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down the
pen. The next moment he started violently. There was a knocking at the door.
Already! He sat as still as a mouse, in the futile hope that whoever it was
might go away after a single attempt. But no, the knocking was repeated. The
worst thing of all would be to delay. His heart was thumping like a drum,
but his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless. He got up and
moved heavily towards the door. Part One - Chapter 1

http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm

"Magda" wrote in message
...

Dear Magda,

... Having finger-prints taken for a driving licence? Maybe in Cuba, the
... former DDR, or some other 'big brother' regime, but certainly not in
... any free country. Finger-printing is for criminals.

I have had my 10 fingerprints taken when I got my first identity card at
18. That card had
a big print (including sides) of my right thumb right under my picture. I
didn't feel I
was being treated as a criminal at all. I wasn't intending to get in
trouble anyway, so I
was glad that if an identity mistake happened, the police already had my
fingerprints and
could prove my innocence.

You're sure you don't mind if "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU" ?? What if your
employer or the AT&T's, Microsofts, Walmarts and Citigroups of this world
were to start biometrically fingerprinting or genetically DNA-scanning
you... you're sure you're "innocent" enough to hand over your fingerprints
to them ?
I just wonder if this fear of a Faustian/Orwellian doomsday is a typically
European concern or is it just a matter of you being ignorant and naive ???

http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm
Feel free to have look, it's free !!!


From Part Two - Ch 5 :
In the ramifications of party doctrine she had not the faintest
interest. Whenever he began to talk of the principles of Ingsoc,
doublethink, the mutability of the past, and the denial of objective
reality, and to use Newspeak words, she became bored and confused and said
that she never paid any attention to that kind of thing. One knew that it
was all rubbish, so why let oneself be worried by it? She knew when to cheer
and when to boo, and that was all one needed. If he persisted in talking of
such subjects, she had a disconcerting habit of falling asleep. She was one
of those people who can go to sleep at any hour and in any position. Talking
to her, he realized how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy
while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a way, the
world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable
of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant
violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what
was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events
to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane.
They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm,
because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass
undigested through the body of a bird.

http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm

From Part Two - Ch 7 :
'We may be together for another six months -- a year -- there's no
knowing. At the end we're certain to be apart. Do you realize how utterly
alone we shall be? When once they get hold of us there will be nothing,
literally nothing, that either of us can do for the other. If I confess,
they'll shoot you, and if I refuse to confess, they'll shoot you just the
same. Nothing that I can do or say, or stop myself from saying, will put off
your death for as much as five minutes. Neither of us will even know whether
the other is alive or dead. We shall be utterly without power of any kind.
The one thing that matters is that we shouldn't betray one another, although
even that can't make the slightest difference.'
'If you mean confessing,' she said, 'we shall do that, right enough.
Everybody always confesses. You can't help it. They torture you.'
'I don't mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do
doesn't matter: only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving
you -- that would be the real betrayal.'
She thought it over. 'They can't do that,' she said finally. 'It's the one
thing they can't do. They can make you say anything -- anything -- but they
can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you.'
'No,' he said a little more hopefully, 'no; that's quite true. They can't
get inside you. If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when
it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them.'
He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy
upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still outwit
them. With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of
finding out what another human being was thinking. Perhaps that was less
true when you were actually in their hands. One did not know what happened
inside the Ministry of Love, but it was possible to guess: tortures, drugs,
delicate instruments that registered your nervous reactions, gradual
wearing-down by sleeplessness and solitude and persistent questioning.
Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by
enquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was
not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make?
They could not alter your feelings: for that matter you could not alter them
yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail
everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose
workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.

http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm

From Part One - Ch 1 :
The Ministry of Truth -- Minitrue, in Newspeak -- was startlingly
different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal
structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace,
300 metres into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to
read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans
of the Party: WAR IS PEACE - FREEDOM IS SLAVERY - IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm

From Part Two - Ch 5 Often they gave themselves up to daydreams of
escape. Their luck would hold indefinitely, and they would carry on their
intrigue, just like this, for the remainder of their natural lives. Or
Katharine would die, and by subtle manoeuvrings Winston and Julia would
succeed in getting married. Or they would commit suicide together. Or they
would disappear, alter themselves out of recognition, learn to speak with
proletarian accents, get jobs in a factory and live out their lives
undetected in a back-street. It was all nonsense, as they both knew. In
reality there was no escape. Even the one plan that was practicable,
suicide, they had no intention of carrying out. To hang on from day to day
and from week to week, spinning out a present that had no future, seemed an
unconquerable instinct, just as one's lungs will always draw the next breath
so long as there is air available.
Sometimes, too, they talked of engaging in active rebellion against the
Party, but with no notion of how to take the first step. Even if the
fabulous Brotherhood was a reality, there still remained the difficulty of
finding one's way into it. He told her of the strange intimacy that existed,
or seemed to exist, between himself and O'Brien, and of the impulse he
sometimes felt, simply to walk into O'Brien's presence, announce that he was
the enemy of the Party, and demand his help. Curiously enough, this did not
strike her as an impossibly rash thing to do. She was used to judging people
by their faces, and it seemed natural to her that Winston should believe
O'Brien to be trustworthy on the strength of a single flash of the eyes.
Moreover she took it for granted that everyone, or nearly everyone, secretly
hated the Party and would break the rules if he thought it safe to do so.
But she refused to believe that widespread, organized opposition existed or
could exist. The tales about Goldstein and his underground army, she said,
were simply a lot of rubbish which the Party had invented for its own
purposes and which you had to pretend to believe in. Times beyond number, at
Party rallies and spontaneous demonstrations, she had shouted at the top of
her voice for the execution of people whose names she had never heard and in
whose supposed crimes she had not the faintest belief. When public trials
were happening she had taken her place in the detachments from the Youth
League who surrounded the courts from morning to night, chanting at
intervals 'Death to the traitors!' During the Two Minutes Hate she always
excelled all others in shouting insults at Goldstein. Yet she had only the
dimmest idea of who Goldstein was and what doctrines he was supposed to
represent. She had grown up since the Revolution and was too young to
remember the ideological battles of the fifties and sixties. Such a thing as
an independent political movement was outside her imagination: and in any
case the Party was invincible. It would always exist, and it would always be
the same. You could only rebel against it by secret disobedience or, at
most, by isolated acts of violence such as killing somebody or blowing
something up.

http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm

From Part One - Ch 1 :
His eyes re-focused on the page. He discovered that while he sat
helplessly musing he had also been writing, as though by automatic action.
And it was no longer the same cramped, awkward handwriting as before. His
pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper, printing in large neat
capitals - DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER - DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER - DOWN WITH BIG
BROTHER - DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER - DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER - over and over
again, filling half a page.
He could not help feeling a twinge of panic. It was absurd, since the
writing of those particular words was not more dangerous than the initial
act of opening the diary, but for a moment he was tempted to tear out the
spoiled pages and abandon the enterprise altogether.
He did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless. Whether he
wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made
no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go
on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the
same. He had committed -- would still have committed, even if he had never
set pen to paper -- the essential crime that contained all others in itself.
Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be
concealed for ever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for
years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.
It was always at night -- the arrests invariably happened at night. The
sudden jerk out of sleep, the rough hand shaking your shoulder, the lights
glaring in your eyes, the ring of hard faces round the bed. In the vast
majority of cases there was no trial, no report of the arrest. People simply
disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the
registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your
one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished,
annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.
For a moment he was seized by a kind of hysteria. He began writing in a
hurried untidy scrawl:
-- theyll shoot me i dont care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i
dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the
neck i dont care down with big brother --
He sat back in his chair, slightly ashamed of himself, and laid down the
pen. The next moment he started violently. There was a knocking at the door.
Already! He sat as still as a mouse, in the futile hope that whoever it was
might go away after a single attempt. But no, the knocking was repeated. The
worst thing of all would be to delay. His heart was thumping like a drum,
but his face, from long habit, was probably expressionless. He got up and
moved heavily towards the door.

http://www.mondopolitico.com/library/1984/1984.htm

-----
Air America: The greatest CIA-operation ever !!!

"Go Fig" wrote in message
...

What about after some incident, you must agree that fingerprints can be
valuable at this point. Clearly they were used in Madrid, as they used
discovered prints at that house to ID conspirators.

Ex post : yes, maybe - but only when justified, and within a decent judicial
framework
Ex ante: NEVER !!! Not where I wanna live anyway...

-----
Air America: The greatest CIA-operation ever !!!

Brian wrote:
So how can we identify a person other than fingerprints? Passports, DLs, and
every other form of ID have been no problem to duplicate for terrorists.

And just how will the usa verify your fingerprints ? If you're a foreigner who
has never been to the USA, your fingerprints will be "virgin". So terrorists
will now know that they can only travel once to the USA since on a second
attempt, they might be spotted.

Where this would make a difference is if someone with same fingerprints enters
with different identity. They might be able to spot them.

What remains to be seen is whether computers really have the ability to match
fingerprints in real-time over such a high volume database since it won't be
just criminals anymore, it will be all visitors.

Where will it stop ? Will the USA then ask for a blood sample so that they can
register your complete DNA ?