<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/13/politics/13fingerprint.html?oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=> The New York Times January 13, 2005 Ridge Wants Fingerprints in Passports By MATTHEW L. WALD WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 - The United States should issue passports that include a full set of the bearer's fingerprints, Tom Ridge, the departing secretary of homeland security, said Wednesday. Mr. Ridge said the change would induce foreign governments to do the same on the passports they issue. Privacy advocates promised to fight the Ridge suggestion, in part because it would deliver the prints of American travelers to foreign governments, and the State Department has been cool to it as well. Mr. Ridge, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research group here, cast his comments as advice to Michael Chertoff, chosen by President Bush on Tuesday to succeed him. "Be aggressive, go after 10 fingerprints on the passports," Mr. Ridge said, adding that it was "a lot easier to negotiate with your allies if you've already done what you're asking them to do." Applicants for visas to visit the United States must already submit to finger scans of both index fingers. Experts call them scans, not prints, because the images are taken on a scanner screen, without ink. Later this year, a 2002 law will require people whose nationality allows them to enter this country without a visa to present machine-readable passports that incorporate a digital photograph as biometric data. A spokeswoman for the State Department, Kelly Shannon, said that the machine-readable passports the United States issues would have a computer chip with 64 kilobytes of memory, far more than is needed for the traveler's name, date and place of birth, passport number and a single photo. The chip could be used for other biometric data in the future, including an additional photo, Ms. Shannon said, adding that "the globally interoperable, chosen biometric for travel documents" was photos. At the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit group here, Marc Rotenberg, the president, said that providing foreign governments with the fingerprints of each American visitor would "make it easier for those foreign governments to conduct their own investigations of U.S. citizens in that foreign country." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'