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Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
RINF.COM: THE BREAKING NEWS ALTERNATIVE
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BREAKING NEWS |
Oz airlines to collect fingerprints
Sunday, July 1st, 2007
The US wants to match passengers’ details against a terrorist database AUSTRALIAN airlines will be required to collect fingerprints from customers travelling to the US so they can be matched against a database of potential terrorists. The requirement will be the next phase in a tightening of security that will soon require Australians travelling to the US to provide all 10 fingerprints when they enter the country. US officials this week announced that they were launching a pilot program of the 10-fingerprint system for passengers arriving at 10 major US airports with visas or under the visa waiver program. The trial includes several airlines that fly to San Francisco International Airport, including Qantas, Air New Zealand and United Airlines. The fingerprints will be checked against databases containing information about potential and known terrorists before they are added to about 100 million prints taken so far as part of a two-print system currently required under the US-VISIT program. But the US Department of Homeland Security ultimately wants airlines to collect fingerprints as part of the check-in process. The decision has caused angst among global airline executives, who see it as another unilateral imposition by US authorities. They are worried about who will bear the cost and are critical of what they believe is empire building by security agencies. They also want governments to establish a common standard for data collection and sharing to make the process easier. There are also worries about inequities in different ways governments fund aviation security and the effect of this on aviation security. However, the deputy secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Jackson, was making no apologies when he fronted last month’s annual meeting of the International Air Transport Association to explain. Warning of the inevitability of more 9/11-style attacks, Mr Jackson said anybody who did not think the visa waiver program posed a threat should look at the data available about radicalised cells in visa waiver program countries in Europe. He said US authorities were required under law to collect entry and exit data as part of the US-VISIT program. Airlines were entitled to ask whether it was a stupid law but that was not the case, he said. “If you look all around the globe, law enforcement and intelligence agencies - not just since 9/11, but certainly in a much more accelerated mode since 9/11 - have collected fingerprint data about people who are real bad actors and engaged in terrorist activities,” he said. “They’re bomb manufacturers, they’ve been in safe houses where we know there are al-Qa’ida terrorist cells harbouring colleagues and we don’t know their name. “We just don’t happen to have a photo of them, we don’t happen to have the passport number for them but we do have maybe one digit of a fingerprint. “So why are we globally going for 10 fingerprints? Because we want to make sure that if we’ve got one digit we’re going to find that digit when you’re coming into the country.” Mr Jackson agreed that there was a need to harmonise the way security agencies collected data, protected it and used it to reduce risk. He said that IATA’s contribution would be valuable and he expected its government counterpart, the International Civil Aviation Association, to take standards and drive them across the globe. He also pointed to Australia’s Electronic Travel Authority as a program “which has been effective for many years”. “We’re looking at that as a way to diminish the risk with visa waiver country travel,” he said. The security official said he believed the focus on biometric data would lead to greater harmonisation but he played down the need for an international biometric smart card. Pointing to his finger, he said: “If you travel with this, you’ve got a card.” Mr Jackson said the department was willing to supply fingerprint readers to the airline industry in the initial phase of the program “to get this thing started”. “And then we’ll say, with our new rules, that we’re happy to integrate the process of taking fingerprints and swiping the passport for outbound international flights to the kiosk. “IATA has been trying to develop the universal kiosk and we believe it would be relatively simple for the industry to get together and make sure that you could swipe your passport, get your fingerprint down and get your boarding pass. We want to work with the industry in the right way but there ain’t enough money around in treasuries around the globe to do this.” Board of Airline Representatives of Australia executive director Warren Bennett said news of the US plans had yet to filter through to carriers in Australia. “That will certainly impose additional operational requirements on the carriers going to the US,” he said. “They already have extra things they have to do to comply with security requirements going into the US.” See More:Big BrotherHave Your Say: Oz airlines to collect fingerprints Please note, only selected comments will be published. Or discuss this report in our new forums This entry was posted on Sunday, July 1st, 2007 at 12:51 am and is filed under Surveillance, Civil Liberties & Human Rights News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. |
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