[privacy] US expands visitor fingerprinting to deter attacks

["Richard M. Smith" <rms () bsf-llc com>]

Does anyone know what happens to the fingerprint images of the folks who are
not considered "terrorists"?  Are the images still retained in a database
for possible future matching?

Richard M. Smith

=========================================

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060908/pl_nm/security_usa_fingerprints_dc_1

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government will take prints of all 10
fingers of foreigners entering the United States and compare them with those
found at sites with ties to terrorists, the country's security chief said on
Friday. 

The United States now collects the prints of only the two index fingers of
foreign visitors. But it will gather prints of all their fingers and thumbs
by the end of 2008, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security,
said.

"We will be able to run everybody's fingerprints against latent fingerprints
that we are collecting all over the world in terrorist safe houses, off of
bomb fragments that terrorists build, or in battlefields where terrorists
wage war," Chertoff said in a speech at Georgetown University.

The department will install new 10-fingerprint reading devices at borders
and airports in two years time as it transfers from the two-print system
criticized for being incompatible with the        FBI's 10-print databases.

Fingerprints are collected as part of the US-VISIT program launched in
January 2004 to tighten U.S. borders and prevent other attacks like those of
September 11 when 19 foreigners -- who all had U.S. visas -- hijacked four
airplanes and killed nearly 3,000 people.

...




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