Travel to the US
 

Involves two things:
1) having your finger prints taken
2) submitting to an iris scan

Proposed in this years queen's speech was a bill that would require foreign nationals to submit to a similar procedure when entering the UK.

I oppose both.

I have discussed the intricacies of such 'defensive' measures at great length with family, friends and colleagues.

Before this requirement I traveled to the following US States a various numbers of times:
Maine
New York
Atlanta
Florida

Following I have not visited the US. Nor will I.

I will not have my finger prints taken. This is a statement of simple fact. There is nothing that could compell me to do so.

It is my opinion that freedom is freedom. That the answer to tyranny is the most powerful word in my language:

no

Re: Travel to the US
 

Meanwhile, travelling within the Commonwealth requires no such proceedure. The question to then ask, is why would one wish to travel to the United States of America when one can enjoy the delights of countries such as Rhodesia, Zanzibar, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, and The Gambia?

Will citizens of the Commonwealth from these nations in turn be required to submit to your draconian identification measures when entering the motherland? Has it really come to this?


Edit: Oh silly me, it appears that Rhodesia and Zimbabwe are the same place, and Zanzibar is no longer a seperate country but a part of Tanzania! Thank goodness for the dear informative souls on these forums who have time to check such things on Wikipedia.

Re: Travel to the US
 

I dont really see the problem with this; you pick fairly minor trivialities to get libertarian about while ignoring everything thats actually important.

Re: Travel to the US
 

what do you suggest is important?

Re: Travel to the US
 

Well if they take an iris scan and register you then you can't go boom anymore obviously

It's got lasers and all (on tv)

They take away your privacy and freedom to give you a false sense of security
Sounds like a fair deal to me
When the threat is over everything will surely turn to normal again

Re: Travel to the US
 

Some of us doesnt have to check wikipedia for such matters, we already know it.

Re: Travel to the US
 

On the subject of biometrics:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/idcards/st...950226,00.html
Nice.

Re: Travel to the US
 

It's for the best. Once you get here in the USA they do a body cavity search and make you take off your shoes. This does not occur to everyone. The TSA agents usually pick out older Jewish looking women and the usual list of racial profiling suspect types such as anyone with brown skin or looking middle eastern.

Re: Travel to the US
 

Erm doesn't "submitting to an iris scan" just involve your eyes being scanned and as long as you're not tagged as some sort of nasty terrorist or a danger then you're free to go through?

It's not like the data is stored anywhere. It's just another scan, like the metal detectors.

Re: Travel to the US
 

'Sorry sir, it's just the long beard made you look like Osama Bin Laden, but your iris scan isn't in the database so please forgive the delay.'

Re: Travel to the US
 

Never trust a man with a beard.

Everyone knows that.

Re: Travel to the US
 

I'm just guessing, but I rather suspect the data is stored somewhere. Otherwise one questions the value, unless they managed to trick Bin Laden and other top members of Al qaida at some point in the past to having their retina's scanned. Generally, if you manage to get close enough to a terrorist to scan his eyes, you are also close enough to stab him in the aforementioned eye. Or at least give him a good solid rendering.

Re: Travel to the US
 

For once I agree with you 100%.

Re: Travel to the US
 

They take a thumb print. Its not a full scan of your hand. The Iris thing however is somewhat new and I have not heard about it before.

I just got a US Visa and did not have to submit an Iris scan. I did however have to have full fingerprints taken (Ive done this before for the FBI as its standard procedure to become a Licensed realtor in Florida - anyone wanna buy a house?)



I would be more worried about the United States suspension of Habeus Corpus, not simply that they take fingerprints. The worry that you can be arrested and detained without charge is somewhat of a concern. Just thank god you arnt arabic.

Re: Travel to the US
 

take a wild guess, better stil let's start a poll to see what the good people od GD think will happen.

Re: Travel to the US
 

I'd be highly skeptical of any claim they erase the data unless the entire process is transparent and audited by some sort of independent body.

Re: Travel to the US
 

quite probably keep it, and use it for other intelligence gathering operations.
its the logical thing to do for a paranoid security service after all

Re: Travel to the US
 

It's to stop blacklisted people from flying (to the USA)
The only way those people can still board an airplane is trough passport fraud

The logical next step would be putting those details' on your passport
Which would, most likely, mean a database is being made
That's happening already isn't it?

Re: Travel to the US
 

Now look at the post I made earlier in the thread:
---------------------
On the subject of biometrics:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/idcards/st...950226,00.html
Nice.
-------------------

Re: Travel to the US
 

they cracked it because, despite using a really secure encryption method - they ruined it by making the 'private key' part from a field on the passport that is publically visible
Its like they went to the effort of making a super secure door, but then hung the key up right next to it.
Its incompetance, no excuse for it.

Re: Travel to the US
 

why would they delete such funky info

About the Information Collected

The electronic data from the two fingerprints is stored in a database and is made available at U.S. ports of entry to Department of Homeland Security immigration inspectors.

Once they get it they'll never get rid of it, if anything the utter mongtardness of the scheme will mean they escalate into gathering even more types of information, and under the auspisies of security share it with whom ever they want. Governments are dickheads, innit bruv.

Re: Travel to the US
 

id like to know how they get the retinal scans of terrorists into the database in the first place.

Re: Travel to the US
 

Erm....I think you may have missed the point..

Re: Travel to the US
 

Retinal scan? Do me a favour.

It's a basic Logitech-clone webcam that takes your picture so it can be compared with any others that have been taken on an entry into the US,

'What's this? Last time you came into the US, you had white skin and a broken nose, now you have brown skin, a beard, a turban and a hooked nose. What's all that about then?'

Frankly, I couldn't give a **** what they do with the data. It's paranoia about 'Big Brother' and what they 'might' do with the data that makes people saty inside with tin foil on their heads.

Grow up.

Re: Travel to the US
 

I grew up and I grew up free.

Wanna try explaining to me why my freedom status has changed?

As I get older I find it increasingly easy to say "no". That's what I'm doing here.

Re: Travel to the US
 

Exactly what part of your 'freedom' gets changed because someone has your fingerprint and a crappy picture of you on file?

Re: Travel to the US
 

Well, it various from person to person but for me it's the bit where you have to do it.

It's like ID cards. I carry various pieces of plastic which sort of identify me, and I have thought it might be useful to carry something which I could use for definitive ID purposes which is smaller than a passport (I do not drive, so do not have a licence). So, I am not opposed to carrying what could be termed an ID card. I do however have serious objections to being forced under the law to carry one. I hope you can see the difference.

More specifically on this issue, I've no idea what they do with this data, nor how much data it is. It seems prudent to start from a perspective of relative distrust of the American government given that they were happy to lie to start a war which has caused thousands, and they seem happy to engage in practices which some might term torture.

The data now might be just fingerprints and a "crappy picture". As time goes on, no doubt the equipment will be improved and upgraded and it'll be a much higher quality image at the very least. The data for now, might just sit on a Homeland Security server, in the future it could be used for other purposes. This is not paranoia, it's simple extraopolation.

You may not mind your data being collected and that information passed around the world. Good for you. Take your photo, scan your bodyparts and put them on a website if you want. Others may not feel the same way and their freedoms are being impinged by schemes like this. Once again, this seems fairly straight-forward. Talk of tin-foil hats misses the point really.

Re: Travel to the US
 

The data is stored and put into a database that can be accessed by a few law enforcement agencies. Say your thumbprint shows up a murder scene. They run it through the computer and it matches they know who you are and how much longer you are allowed to be here.

Yes our freedoms are being squashed and the reason is because there are people in this world that want us dead. Even if you don't believe in God they consider you Christian because you live in the modern world. These somewhat annoying and time consuming measures are required to keep what freedoms we have left and keep us relatively secure.

Re: Travel to the US
 

It isn't ID cards, because the citizens of the country arent required to submit information. A government properly exists to protect its citizens, and one aspect of this involves ensuring that potentially dangerous people arent allowed to enter the country without basic background checks being performed. Maintaining a permanent record of all tourists in a country seems perfectly justifiable as long as it can be shown to have national security benefits. The principle involved is very different from ID card schemes, or any other initiative where the people being forced to provide information are citizens rather than tourists.

Re: Travel to the US
 

If you have a fetish for the nation state I can see why this might be true but I don't. The only real distinction here is that tourists have some sort of choice whether they enter the United States whereas citizens don't. Whether someone has some piece of paper which designates them citizen/non-citizen (or person/non-person) seems pretty arbritrary to me.

Re: Travel to the US
 

Well I guess we should just open our borders and let in anyone who wants to come without any background checks at all then.

Re: Travel to the US
 

I don't think we should have borders*, but yeah.

* = Obviously this being an island we kind of have natural borders, but you know what I mean.

edit : I don't believe we do "background checks" on any but the most extreme cases. I don't anything analogous to a CRB check exists for immigration purposes. Immigration in the sense of people entering the country, obviously if someone's applying for British citizenship they might have further checks. I'm not really sure tbh.

Re: Travel to the US
 

Yeah we pretty much should.



England doesn't think badly of the Scots, Welsh and NIrish who enter the realm*



Im not sure how a fairly crucial determinant of who you are, either biologically or genetically is a 'background check'. If they include dna (and eventually they probably will) you could argue that familial dna links to people i happen to be related to and who did wrong would justify my detainment and questioning but i think its just all rather shit.


*trollish but you're being odd


edit as it is i think the present data is used to definitively determine your travelling patterns etc if they verify you travelled to havana, caracas and paris within a short period of time you get a uav circling your house. Besides even the idea of an actual background check is shit, iirc the US technically requires a visa even if you've only been arrested (ie not convicted or charged) without considering the legality of your 'crime' in the US. A background check only means something if you respect the particular country/law concerned.

Re: Travel to the US
 

Do you not think that there are rather obvious problems that could arise from allowing anyone from (eg) places like Iran enter and leave the country freely without any attempt to check their background and/or determine their intentions for being here?

Re: Travel to the US
 

do you suppose that if they had murderous intentions that their grand schemes would be easily foiled by any checks we could run that aren't criminally insane?

Re: Travel to the US
 

Gordon please stop trolling my thread.

Your argument is bogus. Passports are issued by the citizen's nation state - not by Britain. We do not distinguish between passport holders. We do not carry out any sort or form of check.

Re: Travel to the US
 

Not really, no. As T&F notes, if they actually did have some scheme they could fairly easily get past immigration controls anyway (hell, thousands of people get into the UK every year bypassing immigraiton checks). Also, I'm not clear what exactly they could do once in the country. I'm not suggesting we don't check their luggage for nukes or whatever.

Re: Travel to the US
 

As much as I hate Wikipedia at times, it's a perfectly competent way of reminding you that the left-wing persepective on Government isn't the only one available to subscribe to. I'm far keener on the idea that government exists (or should exist) to protect natural rights (ambiguous at best, but that's a discussion for another day). This is fairly close to the Social Contract theory, which also strikes me as quite nifty.

Re: Travel to the US
 

I think i like the Social Contract one more*, but tbh i dont see why liberty and oppression have to be mututally exclusive.

As for Cooling's first post in this thread; i despair that you didnt mention two of the larger Commonwealth countries, namely Canada and Australia. Curiously, Yahwe, if you dont wish to submit to the fingerprint and/or iris scan, why not just fly to Canada and travel by bus or train (or car, even) over the border into the US? Once in the US, i would imagine that domestic airlines may (or may not) have the same controls as international airports.

hmm?

*Due to a discussion with furbeh; i will elaborate a little. With T&F's comment that "Government exists to protect property from the majority", i reckon that Governments existing to protect property rights isnt far from the truth, as without property rights Capitalism kinda falls apart, thus leading to everyone becoming equally poor (except those who are more equal than others, who become rich), and thus would probably break the social contract philosophy as outlined in that article.

Re: Travel to the US
 

There's two obvious ways to be oppressed in a state that emphasises liberty - more commonly by other citizens exploiting that liberty, but also where a state enforces those liberties in the manner of a totalitarian state.

Re: Travel to the US
 

If you're that concerned by a country taking your fingerprints and a crappy picture of you (which in itself is exceedingly arrogant - what makes you think any organisation gives two tosses about a picture of you?) then don't go to America.

Make a stand!

Noone will notice!

I fail to see what the big issue is.


"I object to having my fingerprints taken!"
"Er... why?"
"Because of the principle!"
"We aren't planning on doing anything with them - even then, what COULD we do with them?"
"I don't care! You MIGHT do something in the future!"
"Like what?"
"I don't know! It's the principle! I don't want to do it!"
"OK Sir, then don't come to America"
"I won't!"
"Okey dokey.... next please?"
"I sure showed you!"

Re: Travel to the US
 

Since earlier in the thread you seem to imply you believed the government won't be saving any of the data, this is hardly surprising.

Re: Travel to the US
 

Well we've since learnt from DM's post that iris scans aren't even taken, so I was right. Iris scans aren't stored. Some grainy webcam image is taken and stored instead. Which I suppose is equally scary?

Re: Travel to the US
 

If it's anythign like some of the pictures on Camwhores, terrifying.

Re: Travel to the US
 

Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion regardless of the fact that yours is ignorant and childish, you are entitled to it.

However. Stop repeating it or I will assume that you have suffered some form of mental deficiency.

You are more than welcome to go over and sit in the "I don't understand the value of the freedom that I was given freely by fortunate accident of birth and if accident ever gave me any position of power or responsibility I would; like a grinning idiot, trade that freedom for a pair of 'magic beans'" corner with the rest of the dribbling idiots if you so chose.

At the moment you are doing the internet equivalent of a child trying to attract the attention of two adults talking.

Please stop.

Re: Travel to the US
 

Well, that's more or less true, but for how long one wonders...

http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/applying/iris/intro

Iris scans at Heathrow have already been installed; at the moment they are a voluntary leasure which can be used to speed your way through customs. I suppose as long as it remains voluntary, the harm is minimised.

However, if this is any example, the Iris scan is stored along with your passport and other vital information on the 'secure' Immigration service system. I can't imagine the US system would be any different...

Re: Travel to the US
 

Next time I go through, I'm wearing a Groucho Marx false nose/glasses set, a dress* and a wig.

We'll see how good these so-called security checks really are then...



























* Yes, this will be a change from normal, lolerz.

Re: Travel to the US
 

has anyone else mentioned that atlanta isnt a state?