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CIA’s Secret Fear: High-Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies’ Cover
- pluies_public 14y agoPretty ironic, given that the US is the only country I've been to (so far) where my fingerprints have been taken. Live by the sword, yadda yadda.
- nfg 14y agoRecently passed through Thailand and had to have fingerprints taken (at a land border).
- andrewpi 14y agoJapan fingerprints foreign visitors as well.
- _debug_ 14y agoJapan does whatever the U.S. tells them to. Or else. In general, considering the 8 U.S. military bases in Tokyo (not Japan, just Tokyo), and in particular, the 31000 sq metre military base in the centre of the city, in Roppongi (prime real estate worth at least $60 m, with a few military helicopters landing/taking off from there every day, and a lot more towards the weekend), IMHO, Japan is an occupied territory not too different from Afghanistan or Iraq. IMHO, the role of Japan in the scheme of things as designed by the US is to hold US debt, giving legitimacy to the piece of paper printed by the Treasury. The entire Toyota drama was about Japan trying to assert it's independence and not follow orders.
- etherael 14y agoThe Toyota drama you refer to sounds interesting, any chance of a link?
- _debug_ 14y agoGot that from someone whose family works in the CIA, no link. Edit : Assuming you were not asking for proof, only information, see : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932011_Toyota_vehicle_recalls http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932011_Toyota_vehicl.... Note that "After a 10 month search, NASA and NHTSA scientists found no electronic defect in Toyota vehicles. Driver error or pedal misapplication was found responsible for most of the incidents". But the dive in Toyota stock price, sales, and most importantly, brand image, was enough to send the message. Toyota stocked surged 20% after the then-Japanese PM resigned after his failure to get the US off of Okinawa.
- Symmetry 14y agoI can see what you're saying with regards to bases, but economically... do you remember the 80s?
- daniel-cussen 14y agoDo you remember the 90s?
- aubergene 14y agoInteresting to read about the helicopter pad in Aoyama http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/11/09TOKYO2570.html http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/11/09TOKYO2570.html
- daniel-cussen 14y agoOh, totally. You figure, first, that America doesn't have 50,000 soldiers there for no reason. No country has ever had soldiers in other countries for no reason. The reason is that it's a vassal state, and the way it pays its tribute is, depending on how you want to look at it, by sending awesome manufactured goods over, or buying bad paper at high prices with its huge annual trade surplus. Cf Germany.
- _debug_ 14y ago"vassal state" Ha, been some time since I heard that phrase, thanks for that!
- vyrotek 14y agoI had my whole hand done when I went to Italy for a few years.
- saryant 14y agoIreland does it for some nationalities.
- pm90 14y agoI think that they take fingerprints in Japan as well, among other things
- smutticus 14y agoJust passed through Doha recently and they took my picture. Once when I entered and another time when I left. I know it's not the same as fingerprinting. But with image recognition getting better it's not that far off.
- adnam 14y agoSpain fingerprints it's entire population as part of the process of getting an ID card ("DNI").
- molsongolden 14y agoOne of my flights from the US routed through Schiphol then I entered Spain without going through customs or getting my passport stamped. I'm not really sure what happened.
- a-priori 14y agoBoth the Netherlands and Spain are in the Schengen Area, so there's no border controls between them. The same happens if you go to Zürich via Paris, for example. I've done that a few times; you don't go through Swiss customs.
- shrikant 14y agoThe UK Border Agency does this as well (could only be for some nationalities).
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- waqf 14y agoBrazil fingerprints U.S. citizens only, as a calculated return of the insult.
- saryant 14y agoA number of nations have a tit-for-tat policy when it comes to immigration practices. For example, China matches the fee for a US tourist visa for Chinese citizens when Americans try to go to China. That's far from the only example.
- nextstep 14y agoPrevious discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3834492 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3834492
- sgentle 14y agoI'm not generally a fan of overblown border security, but there is another angle here: it's now harder for foreign governments to conduct unilateral spy operations in your country. I'm not sure to what extent that actually affects me, but it seems like a plus.
- moylan 14y agodidn't the soviets gain much of their information from american citizens? so i'm sure that many such agencies will simply recruit citizens from the country they wish to spy on. such changes in security practices as this will only change the number of people recruited. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_agents_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_agents_in_the_U...
- officemonkey 14y agoThis probably means more reliance on "low-tech" tradecraft like dead drops, etc. Surveillance is so endemic today, agents are probably being told "assume you are always being photographed." So even a casual meeting in a bar could be observed. So expect a lot of thumbdrives taped to the backsides of toilets in the future.
- sounds 14y agoAn interesting subtext here is Dubai's political stance. They're friendly enough to Israel and Western nations that they "didn't catch" the assassins; even the article says the Mossad's blown cover is a surprise. Meanwhile, Dubai seems happy to roll out biometrics aggressively at their borders. Ok, those are the facts. My analysis: Dubai wants to clamp down on "unilateral" operations (read: illegal or politically toxic acts where Dubai is the pawn in other nations fights). Dubai could become Switzerland-esque neutral party that can reasonably claim Arabs are safe, _and_ Israelis are safe. It would surely boost their tourism to have a clean record. "Come visit us. We can police our streets and protect our borders." And I imagine they wouldn't mind having that kind of political clout either.
- loverobots 14y agoDubai and other micro-states are very susceptible to demographic changes for one and that's very serious. Also a lot of rich (legit and shady) types go there followed by secret services. Dubai will take their money http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/11/kabul-bank-fraud-report http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/11/kabul-bank-fraud... so they need to provide some safety or else there goes the neighborhood. (One smart thing that have done is hire essentially Blackwater to have a heavily armed brigade ready to crush internal dissent or coup attempts.)
- cowkingdeluxe 14y agoA Switzerland where you go to jail for a month for kissing in public. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8602449.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8602449.stm
- ghshephard 14y agoWhich is entirely reasonable - each country has different attitudes about what is appropriate public behavior, and what isn't. What I found odd about this case was that the evidence was pretty minimal, "The pair's defence lawyers said the woman - who did not appear in court - had not seen the kiss herself, but had been told by her two-year-old child that the girl had seen them kissing." - I think this was probably related to the fact that they were consuming illegal alcohol as well.
- dbuxton 14y agoAs a matter of implementation, I wonder if this is in fact true at the moment. Of course in the future there's no reason that national biometrics databases couldn't store unique identifiers that could be used to identify individuals (given the biometrics for an individual, you would be able to look up that individual in your database). However my very patchy understanding of systems as currently implemented is that they provide a way of tying a document reliably to an individual - so that you can present a passport and an automated kiosk can scan your irises/take fingerprints to work out if the document actually belongs to you. This is what's called a "closed search" problem. If you can generate the document in the first place then this doesn't really change the situation from before. Of course systems may get more sophisticated but I suspect the problems with collisions of biometric checksums are likely to put some sort of a limit on the practicality of an approach like this. Especially when retina scans etc can be defeated by wearing lenses etc.
- GiraffeNecktie 14y agoI think you missed the point of the article. Once the biometrics are in the system, you can't go back to that country (or any other country with which it is sharing data) precisely because those biometrics are forever linked with the first identity's travel documents. If you show up again, the fact that your biometrics no longer match the first identity is going to set alarm bells ringing. In other words - the first time those fingerprints passed through the system they were attached to a British citizen called "John Bull" and now look! Those same fingerprints are attached to an Israeli called "Menachem Reichman".