Could you be forced to submit your fingerprints for the offense of "driving while Latino?" To apply for a job? Or even as a condition to enter a Disney theme park?
If you live in the United States, the answer is "yes." And that's got me pointing my finger at some serious problems with these developments.
Last night I had dinner with some friends here in Phoenix. One of my friends—I'll call her Mary—has a friend named Roberto.
Roberto is a native-born American, but comes from a Hispanic family. And he received the shock of his life a few days ago when sheriff's deputies in Maricopa County, Arizona pulled him over while he was driving.
Roberto wasn't intoxicated or driving erratically. In fact, it appears the reason he was pulled over—and detained for nearly an hour—was because he has a Hispanic appearance.
During the encounter, the deputies grilled Roberto about his immigration status. They didn't believe his claims that he was a native-born U.S. citizen. To add insult to injury, the deputies fingerprinted him. Not subjecting to fingerprinting, they told him, would subject him to arrest.
Maricopa County is hardly alone in this regard. Police in Hawaii, Kansas, New York, Wisconsin, and perhaps other state as well, now routinely scan fingerprints when they stop motorists for traffic infractions. At the same time, the FBI is investing US$1 billion in a national database that will combine fingerprint data with retinal scans, and even tattoos.
What's more, if you want to apply for a job, you may have to submit your fingerprints along with your job application. Both state and federal laws now require fingerprinting for many types of jobs, particularly those involving contact with children, security, or with large sums of money.
But what really makes my finger wag is a policy instituted in 2006 at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. To enter the "Magic Kingdom," you must now submit to a fingerprint scan. This is to prevent you from sharing or re-selling your admission tickets.
However, as with many other surveillance technologies, fingerprinting is in many cases essentially "security theater." The FBI claims a "zero error rate" in its fingerprint identification. But that's simply not true.
One problem is false matches. A false match on a fingerprint left on a bag linked to a 2004 bombing in Spain that left 191 dead led to the arrest and detention of Portland attorney Brandon Mayfield. After Mayfield spend two weeks in jail, prosecutors finally released him after realizing that "zero error rate" doesn't necessarily mean, well, "zero error rate."
Fingerprint readers can also be spoofed. In 2005, Japanese cryptographer Tsutomu Matsumoto designed a system to trick biometric fingerprint readers. Matsumoto's system involves duplicating an actual fingerprint through digital photo editing software and other advanced technology. His design apparently fools fingerprint readers about 80% of the time.
In other words, in the not-distant future, someone could hack the FBI biometric database, steal your fingerprints, duplicate them using Matsumoto's techniques or even more advanced methods, and then leave them at the scene of various crimes. Guess who would be arrested?
What routine fingerprinting is effective for is conditioning all of us to accept surveillance and routine searches and identity checks as a routine part of life. And that has me pointing my finger…skyward.
Copyright © 2008 by Mark Nestmann
Comments