If you’re planning a visit to the U.S., you already have to give up your fingerprints and retinal scans to the Department of Homeland Security in order to enter the country. Now the department wants to require every visitor to go through the same procedure in order to leave the country.
And they want to force the airlines to collect your biometric information, rather than do it themselves.
“They are apoplectic” about the proposal, Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) said.
DHS has been testing self-service exit kiosks where international travelers could fingerprint themselves and officially check out as they left the country, but found that almost no departing travelers actually used the kiosks when departing.
Most foreign visitors already have to give up their fingerprints to obtain a visa or upon entry to the U.S. under the US-VISIT program. DHS officials said that an effective exit tracking system would allow them to determine who might be overstaying their visas.
“We are hopeful that they will provide us with enough information so that we can start considering a response,” [said Bob Davidson, the manager of facilitation services for the International Air Transport Association]. “At present, the industry does not have a clear enough picture to enable us to begin thinking through the ramifications.”
Angelo Amador, the director of Immigration policy for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told UPI that industry concerns centered on the issues of infrastructure — the cost and practicalities of installing fingerprint readers connected to U.S.-VISIT databases at thousands of check-in desks — and contingency plans in case of equipment failure.
“What will happen if there are technological problems?” he asked. “Will they prevent people from boarding? Make them miss their flights?” — United Press International
Don’t forget cost. If you force the airlines to do government work and don’t pay them, then ticket prices will rise. Tourism and international business travel to the U.S. are already significantly down, primarily because of potential visitors’ concerns about clearing Customs. Higher ticket prices and more complicated exit procedures will cut international travel even more.
For most of human history, international travel was not much of a big deal. In the past few decades, the rise of computers and networks has enabled governments to track people more closely, and being governments, they have done exactly that. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing depends largely on whether you have access to the government databases. But the U.S. has already used this capability to deny entry to people for political reasons entirely unconnected to any potential threat of terrorism.
Maybe it makes us safer, but at what cost? The society which would result from this endless drive to make us safe from all potential threats, no matter how remote, resembles nothing more than a police state where every behavior is strictly regulated. Sure, we’d all be perfectly safe and wouldn’t have to deal with the government if we never left our rubber rooms. But that’s not a society worth living in. It’s certainly not a society worth working toward.
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Nigel Watt
May 10, 2007
How long will it be before all the airlines go bankrupt and they get nationalized? Driving will probably be safer than flying then.
Matti Kinnunen
May 10, 2007
Well, if DSA gets its way, I am sure to find other places to spend my holidays or do my business.
Barterer
May 10, 2007
What these safety-crats (or terrorcrats) always fail to take into account is the number of lives *wasted,* 10 minutes at a time, by their fabulous new ideas. All the time/money spent building, paying for, implementing, and complying with this crap is guaranteed to be a net loss in terms of lives. At best they are only trading an occasional dramatic loss for a slow drip.
Oh wait, I forgot that they don’t give a shit about actual lives, what’s important is appearing to respond to dramatic events.
Richard Braakman
May 10, 2007
Ok, I wanted to put some numbers to that. I found data from Airports Council International, which shows passenger traffic for 2006 at 30 airports worldwide. Those 30 airports sum to 1.3 billion passengers in a year.
Now suppose the extra hassle added in recent years wastes an average of half an hour per passenger. That’s 74 thousand years of wasted time right there — and that doesn’t even count the time spent implementing this stuff. 74 thousand years of time awake is about what you can get from 1500 human lifetimes.
Dissent
May 10, 2007
The airline carriers responded, saying, in part:
Don Harvey
May 12, 2007
It seems to me that they want people to hate America — they’re acting worse than Prussians in the old days, or Communist bureaucrats. Also, governments have never liked people travelling, all the way back to ancient times.
Dan Mack
May 12, 2007
Airlines are for-profit businesses. Biometric data is biological property owned by each individual traveler. Travelers forced under duress to allow another’s use of their property without permission or opt-out opportunity or just compensation is a clear violation of legal and lawful property rights and right to travel.
Richard Braakman
May 13, 2007
I think the main challenge of a libertarian state will be to find a definition of “property” that is satisfactory to everyone. I don’t see how my fingerprints — while they’re on my fingers — can possibly be property. They’re just patterns. My FINGERS are my property, obviously, and forcing me to present them for measurement is, well, force.
The real problem here is the heavy regulation of air traffic, though. It’s what enables the government to interfere in the right to free travel this way. As long as that element is there, you can’t treat airlines as participants in a marketplace. They are so heavily regulated that any interaction with an airline is interaction with a government agency. In fact, the very fact that we have airlines instead of something loosely organized like a taxi service is probably a consequence of regulation.
Didi
May 14, 2007
As always it seems America goes overboard.
No, you cant take a copy of my fingerprints nor can you take a retinal scan. So I dont visit america. Big deal. Ive been there before and have no desire to go again.
What Americans dont realise is there is a BIG WORLD out there that they dont know about.
People like myself will just travel elsewhere for our holidays.
Im off to Thailand next month wooohoooo
geri
May 16, 2007
Are these people trying to alienate the whole world against us? Good Lord! Don’t we have enough people disliking us for one reason or another?
Well, I guess it WILL solve the illegal immigration problem. They can have the spaces that are vacated as freedom loving Americans flee the country in droves.
Helmetedwarrior
May 18, 2007
What happens when someone hacks into the airline’s database or someone makes a mistake and eveyone’s biometrics are posted on the airline’s webpage? What type of recourse will we have? Once your biometrics are compromised, it is not like you can get a new set of finger prints or new DNA.
Mark
Jun 15, 2007
The word travel means travail….in otherwords what was once an enjoyable experience has returned to its root definition of work….isn’t that what people are trying to escape. I have travelled to over 60 countries throughout the world, in my thirties, and don’t plan to travel again by airliner if it can be helped. As for the view of Americans, I cannot help but agree with the posts stating it gives one more reason for others to dislike us. Travel is a means by which people can learn about other cultures and people yet the barriers put in place and being put into place will just ostracize the American public even more.