Comments on: Airlines to be forced to fingerprint departing visitors

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 19:13:53 +0000

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.

By: Helmetedwarrior

Helmetedwarrior — Fri, 18 May 2007 07:05:00 +0000

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.

By: geri

geri — Wed, 16 May 2007 20:31:21 +0000

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.

By: Didi

Didi — Mon, 14 May 2007 13:48:13 +0000

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

By: Richard Braakman

Richard Braakman — Sun, 13 May 2007 10:49:22 +0000

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.

By: Dan Mack

Dan Mack — Sat, 12 May 2007 21:39:00 +0000

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.

By: Don Harvey

Don Harvey — Sat, 12 May 2007 17:21:54 +0000

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.

By: Dissent

Dissent — Fri, 11 May 2007 00:19:49 +0000

The airline carriers responded, saying, in part:

The department “has decided, without consultation with the airline industry, to relieve itself of the responsibility of collecting biometric information upon departure and, instead, to direct airlines to do so,” James C. May, president of the Air Transport Association, wrote to President Bush’s homeland security adviser, Fran Townsend, Tuesday.
May, whose group represents the major carriers, calls the proposal a “unilateral mandate … as ill-conceived as it was surprising,” and asked Townsend for a meeting on the issue.

By: Richard Braakman

Richard Braakman — Thu, 10 May 2007 23:56:02 +0000

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.

By: Barterer

Barterer — Thu, 10 May 2007 20:22:01 +0000

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.

By: Matti Kinnunen

Matti Kinnunen — Thu, 10 May 2007 19:06:52 +0000

Well, if DSA gets its way, I am sure to find other places to spend my holidays or do my business.

By: Nigel Watt

Nigel Watt — Thu, 10 May 2007 14:09:48 +0000

How long will it be before all the airlines go bankrupt and they get nationalized? Driving will probably be safer than flying then.