http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storyprint.cfm?storyID=3559809
New Zealand Herald Online - Newspaper
Sunday April 11, 2004
[An American flight crew member (left) is photographed and fingerprinted with by an immigration official. Picture / Reuters]
Fortress America mans the ramparts
10.04.2004 - Travellers to the US face fingerprinting and being photographed. CHRIS BARTON investigates if terrorism is reducing us all to numbers
I am not a number, I am a free man!"
So cried "Number 6" (Patrick McGoohan) in the 1967 cult TV classic The Prisoner as he fled Rover, the sinister white balloon that patrolled The Village - sort of Shangri-La meets the Gulag - in which he was contained.
Otago University computer security and forensics professor and cryptography expert Hank Wolfe, who is also an American citizen, sees liberty under threat. "If you look at America I don't think it's the land of the free, home of the brave any more. It's more appropriately called Fortress America."
Wolfe is also scathing of steps taken post September 11 to protect airports. "It's not real security. This is eyewash security. This is for public consumption so that people think that they are doing something."
Several years ago, on this list I belive, I coined a word to describe such foolery - securisimilitude. steve