That would be much harder to fly under the radar because fingerprinting is what you do to people who are arrested. People wouldn't put up with that so easily.
There's been some rumblings of the "uniqueness" of fingerprints being far less than you'd think. Fingerprinting everyone who flies would just produce more false positives. The people that's bad for overlap a lot with the people who stand to benefit from invasive security theater.
I'd be very interested in any source material you have detailing these 'rumblings', both from the first hand experience of having been fingerprinted (which is oddly misrepresented in TV and movies) and from a general interest in forensic history.
As a child I recall an antique book on criminology which spoke glowingly of the reliability of fingerprints in investigations, and cited the unsuccessful defense of one convict who claimed (sometime in the late 19th century) that fingerprinting was a 'hazy and fallacious method imported from France, where many innocent men have been convicted by it." It is true that juries have an unfortunate tendency to believe in the first order results of any technical procedure, from ducking stools to DNA matching.
Some guy from IIRC Texas got arrested in connection with some letter bomb terrorist stuff. IIRC the only connection was the fingerprint. His lawyers basically assumed he did it until some other law enforcement agency finger printed some guy in North Aftrica who fit all the other evidence (i.e. he was known to them as the kind of guy who would be involved in that stuff) and his prints matched as well. I saw it mentioned as a small anecdote in a paper/article/blog about the "rigor" of the forensic "sciences".
They do for GE. I'm not sure why they gave me a RFID card for it. I've always used my fingerprints and passport to get back in via that.
I'm ok with the idea of an opt-in program like GE. With that you understand that your data is being scrutinized and that you're voluntarily giving them your image data+your biodata. I'm not cool with this new introduction of an exit verification as that it's not a formal thing and it's just being pushed on the populous.
This kind of thing really makes you wonder when the American people became enemy combatants. (This has been happening for years)
> I'm ok with the idea of an opt-in program like GE.
It isn't "opt-in" for non-US Americans, one of the reasons why I will probably never visit the US.
> This kind of thing really makes you wonder when the American people became enemy combatants. (This has been happening for years)
As opposed to everybody who just wants to visit the country?
At this rate, I wouldn't be too surprised if 10 years from now they gonna require the full biometric program from foreign visitors: DNA, retina, face, fingerprints, speech samples and whatnot.
I do understand the need for security and proper authentification, I just think these are often used as an excuse for building some kind of police state with a vast database of people with all their attributes from physical (biometrics) to mental (crawling social media).
The last part might seem quite "out there", but it's quite real [0] and has already been for a while [1].
Also doesn't help that all of this reminds me way too much about biometric data programs the US military conducted in Iraq, still sitting on that data and using it [2].
>I'm not sure why they gave me a RFID card for it.
The card is for crossing the border via car. You can use Global Entry at the NEXUS (when arriving from Canada) and SENTRI (inbound from Mexico) lanes, and the procedure there is you are to wave your RFID card across a reader as you approach the agent's booth.
Only if you have passed the screening for NEXUS. Because NEXUS involves being interviewed and checked by authorities from both sides of the Canadian/United States border, and Global Entry doesn't, the benefit only goes one direction automatically. NEXUS members are also cleared for Global Entry but the reverse isn't automatically true.
I don't think I have NEXUS or SENTRI endorsements. Also, I haven't gotten my car inspected for it either. (Another caveat to those, everyone in the car has to have a GE if you're going to do a land border crossing in a car with that)
The NEXUS endorsement is for expedited entry into Canada. But without it, Global Entry still works for expedited re-entry back into the US.
As for Mexico, you just need to register your vehicle on the GOES/TTP portal to use your Global Entry card in the SENTRI lanes. (The vehicle inspection requirement was dropped recently.)
A proper fingerprint scan is labor-intensive. It's more than just putting palms down flat on a scanner, individual fingers need to be rolled. You could use some sort of mechanical assistance if you really wanted to automate it but people would naturally be rather reluctant to put their hands into a machine that was going to apply any sort of force to them.
