Fortress America mans the ramparts

[R. A. Hettinga]

<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.

 Fast forward to 2004. A husband, wife and their young daughter - numbers
19841016400042911666 ... 7 and ... 8 respectively - are arriving at LA
airport en route to Disneyland. At immigration the family hand over their
New Zealand passports. Each is photographed and then fingerprinted.

 The 8-year-old begins to cry. "Mummy, are we going to prison?"

 "Don't worry, darling," comforts the mother. "This is how Americans
welcome visitors."

 This is not some TV programme, but a reality facing all travellers to the
United States. From September 30, tourists from 27 countries, including New
Zealand, who have long travelled to the United States relatively
hassle-free and without a visa will be digitally fingerprinted and
photographed every time they enter the country.

 The move has drawn criticism and some retaliation. The Travel Industry
Association (TIA) of America is concerned "negative reactions" may mean
already declining tourist numbers may fall further.

 "Visitors," says Swiss centre-right Christian Democrat parliamentarian
Eugen David, "will be treated like criminals."

 As for retaliation, China, whose citizens are required to have visas to
travel to the United States, is barring Americans from applying for
emergency visas at Chinese airports and requiring some to be interviewed
before receiving tourist visas. Similarly, Brazil announced in January it
would fingerprint and photograph American visitors.

 New Zealand reaction has been muted - except for Green Party MP Keith
Locke: "Fingerprinting is for people accused of a crime, not law-abiding
citizens."

 The Americans are unmoved - responding with a reverse spin: "Every country
has to take the steps necessary to ensure the security of their borders -
so if Brazilians and Chinese feel safer having fingerprinted Americans we
can hardly object to that," says consular chief Richard H. Adams at the US
Consulate in Auckland. "Yes," he concedes. "In a way the fingerprint is
connected to the whole criminal justice process in peoples' minds and if it
was something else maybe they wouldn't feel that way."

 Alternatives to fingerprinting include retina scanning or
facial-recognition technology, but Adams maintains they're not as quick or
reliable. But as he later acknowledges, the real reason for fingerprint
scans is to check against police databases for prior criminal convictions
in the United States. The fact is they want to know you're not a criminal.

 The fingerprinting regime began in January for visitors from nations other
than the visa-waiver countries. According to the Department of Homeland
Security about 2.6 million people have been processed so far and 200 with
prior or suspected criminal or immigration violations have been stopped.
The visa-waiver countries will add an estimated 13 million visitors a year
to the processing queue.

 Like Number 6 in The Village, all visitors ashore in the United States
will now be a specific number in Homeland Security's database. This is the
price travellers have to pay for September 11.

 Or are border control and security agencies around the world using the
spectre of that event to curb and control individual freedoms?

 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."

 His point is underlined by the fact that travelling American citizens will
not be subject to fingerprinting or photography processing when returning
home. Neither will Canadians or Mexicans carrying border cards. Adams
recognises the exemptions are a double standard - enabling terrorists
either to get Americans to do their bidding or to use fake American
passports themselves.

 "As far as passing for Americans, we are somewhat better at telling real
Americans from fake ones than we are dealing with other nationalities as a
rule."

 But as Wolfe points out, America's vast coastline means border security is
always going to be problematic and the new measures mean terrorists will
find other entry points.

 "The fact is any reasonably intelligent terrorist who wanted to do
something bad on an aeroplane could do it - none of the measures they have
in place are going to stop them."

 The United States also requires all countries that wish to remain in the
visa waiver programme to start issuing "biometric passports" containing
information encoded on a computer chip by October 26. Homeland Security has
recognised the deadline is impossible for most and is asking Congress for a
two-year extension. Interestingly, the United States won't begin issuing
biometric passports until the end of 2005.

 Meanwhile New Zealand is in a position to meet the current deadline.

 "The Government took the decision so as not to inconvenience New
Zealanders that it would be better to stay in the visa waiver programme,"
says Internal Affairs passport office manager David Philp.

 In light of the extension the department may review the start date, but is
also likely to award the first biometric passport contract later this
month. Philp declines to say how much the new passports will cost, but says
New Zealanders will only need to get them when their current passports
expire.

 "I think that when you improve the security of a document, people need to
understand there will be an additional cost."

 A similar scheme in Britain indicates travellers could pay almost twice
the price of a traditional passport.

 Philp says the New Zealand passport will employ the minimum standard set
down by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, or ICAO - namely a
32 kilobyte microchip embedded in a "polycarbonate" (plastic) page inserted
in the book. The chip will contain the same information on the passport.
Except that the photograph will be a digital image and, along with the
biographical and issuing data, will be encrypted (scrambled) - requiring a
special "key" to unlock and read the information.

 The "biometric" bit occurs at the border where the scrambled digital photo
is sucked out of the chip via radio waves into a special reader. It's then
computer processed to give a code or number representing the uniqueness of
the visitor's face and compared with the biometric derived from another
photo taken on the spot. If the two biometrics match, then you are who you
say you are on your passport. Free to go, Number 19841016400042911666.

 Philp says while other countries may implement larger chips that can
contain more information, New Zealand doesn't see the need. "We don't see
any significant reason to put other data in there. We don't have any
intention of collecting people's fingerprints or any other biometric for
that matter."

 But biometric passports are just one aspect of the hi-tech arsenal now
being levelled against the travelling public to combat the terrorist
threat. Some of the most effective happen without their knowledge.

 New Zealand Customs chief financial officer John Kyne says while the
department is looking at all the technology - facial recognition, iris and
fingerprint scanning - no decisions have been made. He says Custom's main
focus is on understanding people's travel intentions as early as possible -
"so we can develop a picture of the travelling public - particularly those
people who might pose a risk".

 How? By linking into airline booking systems and other border organisation
databases and cross checking and matching that information. "We're applying
some rules across certain pieces of information to try and extract the
people whom we want to interact with."

 In other words "mining" data for irregularities and profiling the
individuals that show up. New Zealand's part in what some privacy advocates
are calling "the emergence of a global system of travel surveillance"
begins with Immigration's advanced passenger screening solution. The $3
million system which costs about $2 million a year to run has been
operational with five New Zealand carriers since August. It provides
automatic verification at check-in that the traveller has all the necessary
New Zealand visas. It can also give back the message "Do not board",
stopping undesirables before they get on the plane. Or when they land.

 "Advanced information gets sent, advising us who is on the plane so we can
do further profiling of those people while in flight," says Immigration
chief information officer Rob Bolton.

 The system will be mandatory for all New Zealand carriers when the Border
Security Bill, currently before parliament, is passed.

 But the swapping of information about passengers and the vast databases of
information being built up - largely without people's knowledge or
permission - are causing concern.

 Pressure group Privacy International, along with other privacy groups, has
written to the UN-based ICAO calling on it to stop development work on
biometric passports, which it says "will have disproportionate effects on
privacy and civil liberties".

 The effects stem from abuse of the information held - by accidents or
mistakes that become difficult to correct, or by corrupt officials in
charge of the information. Or by governments using the information for
other purposes - perhaps initially to control the travel arrangements of
dissenters and protesters, and potentially those of entire populations.

 To which the most common reply is that law-abiding citizens have nothing
to fear. But when law-abiding citizens need to be fingerprinted on their
way to Disneyland, one can't help wondering whether the terrorists'
greatest victory is not the destruction of the Twin Towers, but what we
have now become.


-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at 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'