Alec wrote:
At 12:37 PM 4/29/97 -0700, Mike Duvos thoughtfully wrote: |A funny story in last night's Seattle Times... | |It seems the INS and FBI are unwilling to grant US citizenship to |persons without legible fingerprints.
[snip]
Fingerprint escrow?
Does this mean that, ipso facto (I love it), physically challenged individuals with missing or deformed hands are excluded regardless of other qualifications? What a monstrosity of a rule!
Also, can one have one's citizenship revoked if they lose their fingers in a bizarre chainsaw accident? Or if the "Circle of Eunuchs" performs finger-castration on them because they are caught *fingering* people while they sleep? Why are not alternative methods of identification used, such as placing a tattoo on their arms? Or remove the threat they pose to others, by placing them in camps? Other, more crypto-relevant, concerns arise when one considers whether this fingerprint-anonymity is perhaps a form of biological cryptography. Is the person breaking any laws if their fingers leave the country? Can they be required to cut off one of their fingers and send it to the government under fingerprint-crypto escrow laws? Perhaps we need a "Truth in Spokespersoning" law which would require spokespersons to tell it like it is: "We regret to announce that we cannot allow this person to become a citizen, because we consider citizens to be the property of the state, and we need to be able to identify our property. "Of course, there may be other ways to mark the person for identification by the state, but we are too stupid, anal-retentive and uncaring to concern ourselves with looking into these areas. "Besides, we don't have to. We're the government and we can do whatever silly, stupid, uncaring and unjust things we want to our citizens without suffering any consequences for our actions." FingerMonger