ciaran
|
Tuesday 20 November 2007
|
about:
privacy
Starting today, the Japanese government is going to fingerprint
all visitors. As can be seen in the brochure, a print of each index finger will be taken, like the USA's procedure. It seems to me that the most fitting protest would be for annoyed travellers to wear one-fingered gloves or plasters of an agreed colour on their index fingers while in countries that do this.
There is a petition against this that you may wish to sign. However, if you do, you should probably misspell your name to thwart possible attempts by the Japanese government to use this petition as the basis of a trouble makers list.
When the USA started this, Brazil reacted by fingerprinting USA citizens when they enter Brazil. There is information about the USA's system and some links and information about Japan's similar system and Brazil's reaction on the Wikipedia article: USA-VISIT. Brazil has a large community of 2nd and 3rd generation Japanese immigrants, so maybe they will react against Japan's system too. And it's worth noting that Japan's system is actually even worse than the USA's.
The BBC has a good article about the jusifications. It seems some minister said this was necessary because one of his friend's friends is in Al-Qaeda. Then, realising that was a stupid thing to say, he gave a bungled retraction. More information can be found on the Re-entry Japan blog.
This is a pity because I have some friends in Japan (some are Japanese, some are European, some are Filipino) that I would like to see again, but this new procedure discourages me from going there.
If everyone accepts Japan doing this, is the EU next? The Reuters article I linked to at the top says that the UK is already considering something similar.
