Welcome to the US - up against the wall!

Or: We welcome you with open arms - and open databases.

Or: How to win friends and influence people.

Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) - Up to 28 million visitors to the United States now have to stop for photographs and fingerprinting under a new government program launched Monday and intended to make it harder for terrorists to enter the country.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said the new US-VISIT program applies to any visitors who must have a visa to enter the United States. ...

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says the goal of the US-VISIT program is to track the millions of people who come to the United States every year on business, student and tourist visas - and to use the information as a tool against terrorists.

All 115 US airports handling international flights are running the program, along with 14 major seaports. Fifty land border crossing points are to be added by the end of the year.

As noted, the requirement applies to those who must have visas to enter the US. That exempts visitors from 28 nations - mostly European, but also including Japan, Singapore, Australia, and a few others - who are entering under the visa waiver program. Apparently they're regarded as less of a threat.

Oh, wait, there is a group to who the exception does not apply: journalists, who have been rather forcibly reminded of late that they require a special "I-visa" for entry.

Oh, and there's another: Canadian citizens who live in the US to work, who also require visas to re-enter the US after a trip home.

The information taken will apparently be kept indefinitely. The BBC reports that the photos and fingerprints

will be electronically checked against a national digital database for criminal backgrounds and any terrorist lists.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says the data will be stored securely and made available only to "authorised officials on a need-to-know basis".

These include customs and immigration officials, DHS transport security officers and consular officers of the state department.

But access may also be given to other federal, state, local and foreign officials.

"Careful safeguards... will ensure that the data is not used or accessed improperly", a DHS policy statement says.

Just what constitutes "improper" access here is, not surprisingly, unspecified, considering the rather wide range of agencies - including foreign governments - who will (I don't for a second buy the limiting word "may") have access to the information.

What's also unspecified is how this is going to, in Tom Ridge's words, keep the US "open to visitors but closed to terrorists." As I recall, most if not all of the 9/11 hijackers were here legally. Further, the accuracy of these databases is, well, questionable - as when it recently alerted French authorities that a 6-year old boy on an Air France flight was actually a suspected terrorist. And as has become clear, there is no information as to how anyone gets on such a watch list and it's almost impossible to get off one, no matter how demonstrably incorrect the listing.

Now, in fairness, it's true that, as CNN says,

[b]y October, all visitors will be required to have a machine-readable passport or some other method of biometric identification, such as fingerprints or retina scans

so the apparent loophole for people from the visa waiver countries would supposedly be closed and we'll be able to keep track of all them damn furriners. Which I frankly suspect is the real point: This is more an exercise in control than security.

After all, how much security does it actually offer? Ridge says the system is easy on visitors but "hard for terrorists to avoid." But is it? There seems a straightforward way to defeat it. Send newly-recruited agents (to reduce the chance of their being known to intelligence agencies or otherwise recognized by "old fashioned" means) to the US with forged passports from a country in the visa waiver program. The fingerprints on the passport can be lifted from someone else - a corpse, even. Unless the person is fingerprinted on the spot, which they apparently won't be (that is, after all, the point of the machine-readable fingerprint on the passport), it's extremely unlikely they'll match anyone on a watch list. And if their activities here subsequently do raise suspicions, some of the data you have on them is wrong. You have a picture, of course (obviously the picture has to be of the agent, even if the fingerprints aren't), but you've always had that.

So what actual new level of security does this bring? No serious amount, as far as I can tell. Basing security precautions on the idea that your opponents are uncreative knuckleheads is a really, really dumb idea.

Footnote: Contrary to impressions, US-VISIT supplements but does not replace the notorious NSEERS program which discriminatorily targeted Arab and Muslim men. Instead, the ACLU reports,

the government is quietly continuing NSEERS along with its efforts to deport nearly 14,000 predominantly Arab and Muslim men and boys who reported for registration under NSEERS.

Sometimes Ya Just Gotta Laugh Dept.: The Toronto Star says that

[a]n estimated 200,000 Canadians holding visas to live or work in the United States are subject to fingerprinting and photographing under the US-VISIT program to ensure they are not the victims of fraud, Homeland Security spokesperson Danielle Sheahan said.

"We fingerprint you and photograph you again to make sure you are the same person who was fingerprinted and photographed when you got the visa," Sheahan said.

Oh! I get it now! It's not an anti-terrorist scheme, it's a consumer protection program!