- The United States' new biometric system of border
controls
violates civil rights without delivering security, the head of the
London-based
civil liberties watchdog Privacy International has warned.
-
- The system involves a "wholesale and aggressive
violation" of privacy but was also likely to generate errors and
eventually
collapse under its own weight, Privacy International director Simon Davies
said.
-
- Davies was speaking after the release of a critical
report
on the US Visitor & Immigration Status Indication Technology System
(US-Visit) prepared by Privacy International and published a day after
the system, which began operating in January, was extended to cover the
citizens of 27 "visa waiver" countries - including the UK.
Germany,
and Japan - whose populations are considered to be
"friendly".
-
- Under the system, supplied to the Department of Homeland
Security by the technology services company Accenture, visitors have their
photograph taken and undergo two digital index-finger scans before they
can pass through immigration controls.
-
- The extension of US-Visit to the visa waiver countries
had gone smoothly, US officials said, but Davies warned of future
problems.
-
- "This system is actually going to endanger
security,"
he said. "It was introduced shortly after 9/11 with no debate and
no consideration of the practical problems involved. I know the system
won't perform as promised."
-
- The solution to the US's security problems was not mass
surveillance, but targeted intelligence gathering, the privacy campaigner
said. "This is using a sledgehammer to crack a nut."
-
- German researchers have already shown that it is possible
to fool the system by covering fingerprints with a film of rubber gum,
Davies said.
-
- And a statistically significant percentage of people
- such as bricklayers or those with severe arthritis - will not be able
to use the fingerprinting system, he said. "What happens when I visit
the US and I have my arm in a sling? What do they do then? There are
dozens
of cases where there is likely to be trouble."
-
- Davies sees the development of an integrated and
interoperable
global system, with the likely adhesion of countries in the EU, Canada,
Australia and Japan, as a further threat to civil liberties and to the
reliability of the system.
-
- "As the system grows the opportunity for error will
rise exponentially," he said. "That's a mathematical equation
you can't escape, but it seems to have slipped the minds of US and European
officials."
-
- The Privacy International report predicts that there
could be as many as a billion identities within a global biometrics and
data system within 15 years, if major countries follow the US lead.
"The
potential for mass error in such a system cannot be overstated," it
says.
-
- The report cites the case of Brandon Mayfield, the Oregon
lawyer whose fingerprint was wrongly matched with that on an unexploded
backpack used in the 11 March terrorist bombings in Madrid, as an example
of the unreliability of current fingerprinting technology for establishing
identity.
-
- "This programme is a slap in the face for those
countries that have regarded the United States as a friend and ally,"
Davies said. "The fate that befell Yusuf Islam (formerly known as
the singer Cat Stevens) will happen to a countless number of other
travelers.
-
- "They too will have no rights under US law when
falsely accused and deported." Islam was barred from entering the
US last month on national security grounds.
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- Davies said flaws in the system could seriously disrupt
air travel to the US and its eventual collapse could undermine confidence
in the US security apparatus.
-
- "I don't believe that an imperfect system is better
than nothing," he said. "I think this is going to endanger
security.
They made a huge error of judgement to appease public opinion in the
US."
-
- - Philip Willan writes for IDG News Service
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