
CIA’s Secret Fear: High-Tech Border Checks Will Blow Spies’ Cover - jentulman
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/04/cia-spies-biometric-tech/all/1
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sounds
An 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.

~~~
cowkingdeluxe
A Switzerland where you go to jail for a month for kissing in public.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8602449.stm>

~~~
ghshephard
Which 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.

~~~
Confusion
And it's entirely reasonable for cowkingdeluxe to be critical of a country
where "you go to jail for a month for kissing in public". You can validly hold
a negative opinion about some "attitudes about what is appropriate public
behavior".

You can take political correctness and cultural relativism too far: this
attitude about what is appropriate public behavior, taking into consideration
the other behaviors that are considered (in)appropriate in concordance with
it, is just _awful_ and can't change soon enough.

~~~
Symmetry
Can you explain your position a bit more? I mean, its illegal to go around
nude in the United States and I'm not sure how banning public kissing is
objectively any worse than that. You can say that local laws should reflect
what the local culture finds acceptable in public, in which case both sets of
laws are fine, or you can say that everyone should be really liberal in what
they accept in public, in which case both laws are bad, but I'm not seeing why
you would only object another countries laws against kissing in public.

~~~
ghshephard
In the united states, there are places where you would think that it was
"nudity" that was illegal, when it fact it's public indecency/lewdness that is
illegal. That is, it's the "intent" - I have run into naked people in San
Francisco (Bay to Breakers being an obvious example, but numerous
protest/art/just-being-social examples) as well. And, from time to time, I see
naked people protesting in Berkeley who don't seem to get arrested that
quickly (if at all).

I have zero problems with public nudity, but, I also have zero problems with
laws against outright public displays of affection (PDAs) - hell, for that
matter, when I go to burning man, there's lots of environments where you trip
across balls-out sexual-activity - and I don't recall being particularly
offended (or even shocked after the first couple times). So, I do believe it's
a lot about social-relativsm, and defining what the norm should be. Depending
on where you are, any of these activities (kissing, nudity, intercourse) may
be considered lewd/indecent - and I don't usually judge/disapprove of a
society that makes any of these activities illegal.

I do think it's important (and I do judge cultures) as to whether they clearly
establish what the laws are, and that they uphold a certain level of evidence
before finding someone guilty. I also think you should have the opportunity to
confront your accuser. So - No problem with Dubai outlawing public kissing,
but, I do have a lot of problems with the way the approach to the law went in
this case (2 year old child's testimony of a third-party event, and the mother
of the child/child didn't even show up at the trial)

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pluies_public
Pretty 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.

~~~
andrewpi
Japan fingerprints foreign visitors as well.

~~~
_debug_
Japan 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.

~~~
daniel-cussen
Oh, 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_
"vassal state" Ha, been some time since I heard that phrase, thanks for that!

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sgentle
I'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
didn'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_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_agents_in_the_United_States)

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nextstep
Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3834492>

~~~
jentulman
Sorry about the repost, I did do a quick search first, and the repost filter
didn't pick me up when I submitted.

~~~
Retric
I would not worry about a repost when the first one only had 2 posts.

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dbuxton
As 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
I 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".

