Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Photogragh and fingerprints of travellers

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Photogragh and fingerprints of travellers

I was delayed for 30 minutes at the immigration counter at Jakarta airport. The delay was due to an exercise to capture the photograph and fingerprint of visitors. A friend who arrived in Jakarta later in the day was delayed by 3 hours.

It would be quite troublesome to visitors, if all the countries decide that they need to capture the photographs and fingerprints of all visitors. Surely, the information can be captured once, e.g. at the home country, and can be allowed for access by immigration authorities in all the countries that are being visited?

Perhaps a global organisation like Google or Microsoft can provide this service and encourage immigration authorities to access a common server? As a traveller, I am happy to have the images captured once and be accessed globally.

Tan Kin Lian

6 comments:

Steve F said...: It is a keep government people employed exercise. There is no competition and there is no choice in immigration so its highly inefficient and costs are high. And do you think immigration officials really spot criminals when they have to check thousands of cards everyday? Visa and Mastercard can track people all around the world yet I need to fill in the same form every time I go into a country multiple times. The reality is a simple secure smart card with finger print, photo and some other reference point would deal with this easily and reduce errors and fraud. You could even have an area in the card for storing your ticket information. Randomly check 1 in 10 people or so and track for obvious fraud and you have an effcient fast low cost system.

The two things preventing this is no government wants to trust another government because they might lose power or face and no government employee will deliberately enable a system that puts them out of work.

Singapore is probably more efficient in this than most other governments in the world with its single number ID system.; April 21, 2010 2:24 PM
Steve Wu said...: It is not well recognized that fingerprints are particularly vulnerable to identity thefts if the data are not properly used nor guarded. To make matters worse, unlike passwords, fingerprints cannot (easily) be changed if they are compromised.

It will be a major issue if such a fingerprint database is hacked into. Google claimed recently that the source code for its authentication system was stolen, allegedly by Chinese hackers. So such things can happen and they do happen.

It is also not difficult to lift the fingerprint from a surface and to apply lithography on a suitable material to re-construct the print to be worn over a live finger. This will even deceive an active fingerprint reader.

I would have a lot of reservation to leave any fingerprint data with a government agency (unless compelled by law, e.g. NRIC, passport), much less a commercial entity.

It is interesting to note that in the US and I'm sure some other countries as well, it is illegal to collect the fingerprints of the citizens unless they are arrested (strong privacy laws). The present work-around is for a foreign government to take the fingerprints as part of the immigration control (post 9/11), eventually the data may be shared between countries upon request.; April 21, 2010 2:53 PM
Anonymous said...: Democracy and efficiency don't necessarily mix very well.

There is always a danger when personal information becomes centralized and easily accessible to governments. The danger being that a non-democratic government may seize power one day and use the centralized information to easily control the population.

That is why Americans refuse to accept an identity card system. And still fiercely defend the individual's right to carry firearms.

It is from their cultural heritage of their war of independence against the English king. As well as their war against Nazi Germany.; April 21, 2010 4:47 PM
wjsim said...: It is not so much about destroying jobs when you make something more efficient. While jobs pretending to be in demand are removed, more efficient jobs are created in Google or Microsoft, if that's what they end up to be.

The crux is more about leaving your personal identity with commercial companies. I believe the companies themselves would not want to place themselves in such a dangerous position and hold themselves accountable for the identities of the whole world.; April 22, 2010 12:20 AM
Tan Kin Lian said...: I am quite happy to leave my photograph and fingerprint at a central database managed by a government agency or a commercial agency working on contract with a government.

At least, I do not have to go through this process in many countries that I visited. I only need to do it once.

I agree with Steve Fual that we need a better way to track down terrorists, rather than to impose hassle on the millions of ordinary travellers.; April 22, 2010 8:31 AM
Jason said...: There is a common sentiment that when we give information to Google, and use it as a common repository of information, for eg through its Google search/Gmail/Google Apps/Chrome/Android,
we are using the most effective and practical result, but sacrificing our privacy in the process.

Perhaps it might have drastic consequences in the future? Especially many countries who would not like to see so much power vested in a US-based company, which might be subject to fickle US laws with international consequences. Even the EU itself is considering standardising many American standards and Internet consortiums out from the US into Europe.; April 22, 2010 10:53 PM