US expands visitor fingerprinting to deter attacks
Pastor Dale Morgan
US expands visitor fingerprinting to deter attacks*
By Deborah Charles
Fri Sep 9, 4:12 PM ET
The U.S. government will take prints of all 10 fingers of foreigners
entering the United States and compare them with those found at sites
with ties to terrorists, the country's security chief said on Friday.
The United States now collects the prints of only the two index fingers
of foreign visitors. But it will gather prints of all their fingers and
thumbs by the end of 2008, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland
Security, said.
"We will be able to run everybody's fingerprints against latent
fingerprints that we are collecting all over the world in terrorist safe
houses, off of bomb fragments that terrorists build, or in battlefields
where terrorists wage war," Chertoff said in a speech at Georgetown
University.
The department will install new 10-fingerprint reading devices at
borders and airports in two years time as it transfers from the
two-print system criticized for being incompatible with the FBI's
10-print databases.
Fingerprints are collected as part of the US-VISIT program launched in
January 2004 to tighten U.S. borders and prevent other attacks like
those of September 11 when 19 foreigners -- who all had U.S. visas --
hijacked four airplanes and killed nearly 3,000 people.
Chertoff said getting more prints should deter those who want to enter
the United States to carry out an attack.
"Every single terrorist who has ever been in a safe house or a training
camp or built a bomb is going to have to ask ... 'Have I ever left a
fingerprint anywhere in the world that's been captured?"'
Under US-VISIT, visitors from most countries must have a digital photo
and fingerprints taken by an immigration officer as they enter the
country. Until now, the data had been checked just against terrorist
watch lists and criminal databases.