Security

U.S. to fingerprint E.U. visitors: Visitors from European nations traveling with visas or visa-free to the United States will soon have to give 10 digital fingerprints when entering the country, a senior U.S. Homeland Security official said Monday. Let’s see, the last time I had my fingerprints taken by a digital scanner owned by the U.S. government, it took 30 minutes and continual rewetting of my fingertips because the system was having trouble matching the individual prints to a ten-print scan. Since that was in April, and the machine was fairly new and expensive, I doubt the technology used in the various points of entry has any reason to work much more consistently. I wonder how they plan on handling the extra delays? ...

You know that Ohio state government data storage device, containing the personal information of hundreds of thousands of people, that was stolen from an intern’s car? You ever wonder why that kind of information would be in an intern’s car? Well, the Associated Press explains: Under protocol in place since 2002, a first backup storage device is kept at a temporary work site for a state office along with the computer system that holds all the employee information, and a second backup device is given to employees on a rotating basis to take home for safekeeping, officials said. ...

Bruce Schneier blogs about the reaction on the part of police to some backpacks hung on a tree. Personally, I wouldn’t argue that treating backpacks on a tree as possible bombs is an overreaction in this case. It isn’t as if we haven’t seen bombs in backpacks. Admittedly, it seems unlikely someone wanting to commit a terrorist act would hang them in a tree, but that’s a fine line to tread. However, it did bring to mind one thing that has been bothering me for the last couple of days, and that is the assumptions we make about security, rather than using something akin to common sense. If a danger fits a profile currently popular with the public, it seems to be automatic to assume any situation that comes close to that profile must be a danger. As a result, you end up not being able to leave anything unattended in Boston, take pictures of public works facilities, or put your hand near your waistband in a poor neighborhood without taking the risk it will trigger someone’s sense of danger due to a scenario they have already constructed in their head. ...