Re: More info that US passports will get RFID and digital signatures

[Roland Perry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Brian Beesley 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
> On Saturday 30 October 2004 16:32, Roland Perry wrote:
> > There have been several schemes, which ebb and flow as various dates
> > come and go. One of them was, as you say, that any passport issued after
> > Oct 2004 must be biometric to gain entry to the USA without a Visa.
> > That's been put off for a year by the US-VISIT being extended to VWP
> > countries. But lots of people in the USA are very unhappy about that.
> > Richard Reid, they will tell you, was a Brit.
>
> The point here being that the proposed new scheme would not have stopped
> Richard Reid getting on the plane anyway.

He was turned away once, and came back the next day. Recent changes make 
life more difficult for those (like him) who claim to has lost their 
passport in order to get a new one. He was on the fringes of "watch 
lists", and might trigger one today. People's feet are checked nowadays.

Yes, all things whose manifestations are largely *before* the trip, but 
the Americans have prevented very many flights from taking off when 
there were suspicions, and the US-VISIT is addressing the specific risk 
of people creating mayhem once they've been admitted.

> In fact none of the so-called security measures relating to identifying 
> passengers would have had any effect whatsoever in preventing 9/11, 
> even if they could operate free of either type of error.

On one hand it's seductive to think this, on the other the FBI was 
following various lines of enquiry before 9/11 which might have homed in 
on the perpetrators if more information had been available.

> Richard Reid _should_ have been detected by personal search irrespective of
> documentation relating to his identity.
>
> In fact, it probably didn't make much difference, as his "bomb" would have
> been rather unlikely to bring the aircraft down even if it had been detonated
> to maximum effect.

Your average man on the Manhatten Omnibus would file being "slightly 
blown up" alongside being "slightly murdered".

> My guess is that the USA probably has a lot more to fear from its "leaky"
> land borders with Mexico and Canada than it has from travellers arriving
> through official channels. Another problem that documentation does nothing to
> address.

They are tightening up on the paperwork for immigrants inside the USA, 
it's getting harder to exist as an illegal all the time.

> All this is about exercising power over travellers so as to be seen to be
> doing something to counteract the fear of terrorism built up by the state's
> reaction to a few actual incidents.

It's the "Fortress USA" mentality, just as we have the "Fortress UK". 
How much of *your* taxes do you want to spend housing, educating and 
healing several million minimum wage economic migrants?

> they simply don't or won't see that using fear as a weapon is in itself 
> a terrorist tactic.

They don't seem to have the British stiff upper lip mentality, that's 
for sure.
--
Roland Perry