Alien Fingerprints

[Lightning Rod]

The Washington Times tells us that, "The Department of Homeland Security has met a congressional deadline to establish a new biometrics-integrated fingerprint system at the nation's 50 busiest land ports of entry, but its effectiveness has been challenged in a Justice Department report."

I spent enough years in the business of exploiting the porosity of the Mexican/Texas border to know that in many places the only security barrier between our countries is about a foot of water. I've smoked bales of tea that came to me on the backs of intrepid hikers. The same is true of the Canadian border. If you can step through a barbed wire cattle fence, you're in.

Even at times when the Mexican border was nearly closed during periodic drug crackdowns, friends of mine had no trouble getting to Dallas with semi-trucks full of herb. One of those trucks could have just as easily carried a nuclear device. And if you can smuggle 4,000 pounds of pot, you can smuggle 10,000 pounds of nitrate fertilizer. A short hike across North Dakota and one man can import fifty pounds of hashish, heroin or anthrax powder.

My point here is that if you are trying to smuggle yourself, or contraband, or terrorist plans across our borders, it is no large feat because our borders are long. If you are serious about what you are doing, you can manage to avoid 50 checkpoints where you know they are going to fingerprint you, especially if you have a name with Al or Bin or Mohammed in it. Do you think Osama bin Laden would try to slide through the biometric fingerprint station at Niagara Falls? Not likely. He would have a better chance of hiding in a coffin like Dracula with a bed of native Arabian sand on the bottom and placing himself on a container ship.

But the concept of gated communities appeals to Republicans. If they don't live in one already, they would like to. This is part and parcel of the siege mentality. Put yourself in prison as protection from all the imagined bad actors out there. They want to rob you or hijack your car or rape your wife. If I wanted to burn your house down all I need is a match, and guards in little tile topped kiosks won't stop me.

This is a truth that any burglar knows: Locks are for honest people. They only work if you believe in them. Thieves don't believe in them. In the same way, the biometric fingerprinting system will only work for honest people. It is not a good tool for monitoring the movements of criminals and terrorists. They are going to move under the radar. It's you who are being monitored. Every time you step across the border you will be subject to fingerprinting. So, you don't have a criminal record and you are not a terrorist. They don't have your fingerprints in their database. Guess what? They do now.

The Times article continues:

"Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said in the report that the US-VISIT system takes two fingerprints from each visitor and checks them against a Homeland Security "watch list" that contains records from its own automated fingerprint system, known as the Automated Biometrics Identification System, or IDENT.

Mr. Fine noted that a recent study by the Justice Department comparing the performance of IDENT at identifying immigrants with criminal records at Border Patrol stations and ports of entry found that conducting checks using only the IDENT watch list failed to identify more than 70 percent of the criminal immigrants encountered by border authorities."

So, we see how well this show-biz security works.

The Homeland Security business is the greatest boondoggle in history. In the name of it, our whole government has been overhauled, agencies have been created, wars have been launched, people have been killed and most importantly, money has been spent. Tens of billions in government money has been spent. State and local governments alone have spent close to five billion dollars to be prepared as first responders during elevated security alerts. This means that the money that could have been spent on county hospitals and textbooks and teacher's salaries, instead is being blown on gas masks and flack jackets and haz-mat suits.

If Osama bin Laden is really the evil genius behind the 9/11 attacks, then he has succeeded in a miraculous blow. Using only nineteen soldiers and the most primitive weapons, he has cost the mightiest nation on earth its confidence, its integrity, its wealth and probably its democracy. Our lifestyles and our whole national spirit have changed. It's a real David and Goliath story, you know, Biblical proportions.

If I were George Bush I would be putting Osama bin Laden up in a resort hotel somewhere outside the tsunami zone. I would give him all the gin he could drink and all the dope he could smoke and hot tubs full of cheap Western whores. I'd even let him tape a speech now and then, like two days before an election. Osama has been a gold mine for Bush's 'political capital.'

The Poet's Eye sees that the biometric chip is the only answer to our immigration and identification problems. The Emperor George could decree that a census should be taken and every person in the world should go to his city of birth to be taxed and implanted with a small chip that would be immediately locatable by Global Positioning Satellite. That way the government could plot our every move and also provide the credit card companies with location information so that in the case of a delinquent bill, tiny cruise missiles about the size of Bic lighters can be launched against the debtors.

[mtmynd]

I like this... well thought out.

[mnaz]

If I were George Bush I would be putting Osama bin Laden up in a resort hotel somewhere outside the tsunami zone. I would give him all the gin he could drink and all the dope he could smoke and hot tubs full of cheap Western whores. I'd even let him tape a speech now and then, like two days before an election. Osama has been a gold mine for Bush's 'political capital.'

Perhaps this is not so far from the actual truth. It sure as hell seems that way. Enjoyed the read, LR...

[abcrystcats]

The only real point of these biometric chip implants, intimate inspections at the airport, and even more intimate inspections of our finances, is to control the AMERICAN people. We are the terrorists Dubya is after -- not the real ones across the ocean, and certainly not the illegal immigrants of all types, invading our borders.

We are gradually becoming accustomed to a total loss of privacy, and perhaps that's a good thing, because in the near future, we will have none, and we have precious little now.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Clear, dead-on reasoning, Cat. Very succinctly said.

And howdy from deep inside the SoCal rain.


--N

[abcrystcats]

I've heard all about your Biblical deluge from family. We've had snow here; it's still on the ground. It was bitter cold here yesterday but today it's warmed up.

Read Elaine Cassel's book, "The War on Civil Liberties" for a good perspective on this subject. Got it for Xmas from my aunt and uncle, and it gives an excellent overview of the assault on the Constitution.

[stilltrucking]

I personaly favor bar codes, i think we should all have our social security numbers tatooted across our farheads. The line that jacks my jaws is "that is why we went to war in Iraq, so we won't have to fight them over here."

Pictures in the Express News of the new watch towers along the southern Canadian border down here, sitting empty because there is no money to man them. about a month ago.

Oh man I got down on my fucking knees and pray that I am an idiot and George Bush is Abe Lincoln. Not really but don't you wish we was wrong? Gallows humor was popular behind the iron curtain under Stalin. Can there be sanity with out some kind of humor? sorry about the pop quiz

BTW is the Washington Times still owned my the Moonies, that always makes me wonder about them.