Who watches the watchers?

Okay, here's a simple question. The US-VISIT program has begun taking fingerprints of people entering the country with the eventual goal of being able to check every single person who enters. The idea, we're assured, is to keep terrorists out while letting visitors in.

And how does this work? (That's not the simple question. That's still coming.) Well, the fingerprints or iris scans or whatever other means of "biometric" ID is used will be run through a database - actually a number of databases, both public and private - to see if there's a match.

So the information is compared with a database of biometric info about known or suspected terrorists? (No, that's still not it. Hang on.) Yeah, pretty much.

(Okay, here it comes.)

What database?

Really. What database? In fact, there is no such database.

At best, Washington may have a few dozen photos of suspected terrorists, say analysts.

But it has no database of their fingerprints, much less their irises or any other biometric identifier, such as walking gait, voice or hand geometry,

the Toronto Star reports in its Saturday edition. The only significant biometric database the US has is that of the 40 million criminal records compiled by the FBI. So while the system could catch some fugitive drug dealer or the like, it is utterly, totally, ridiculously useless for its stated purpose of protecting national security.

Protecting against terrorists by biometrically identifying every person who enters the country is a fantasy, say leading experts in the field, and a potentially dangerous one. ...

But today's systems aren't up to the job, says George Tomko, a Canadian biometric pioneer regarded as one of the fathers of the technology. Even a 99.99 per cent accuracy rate - which doesn't exist - could leave millions of people vulnerable to mistaken identity.

Biometrics works effectively on "one-to-one" identification, Tomko says, where a scanner reads a fingerprint on a passport or card, compares it to the real finger in front of it, and determines that you are you.

"But there are too many errors when it's used on 'one-to-many.' he says. "Biometrics doesn't have the accuracy needed to identify passengers against a huge database of bad guys."

If you have, say, a restricted area to which only a handful of people should have access, biometrics are a good security measure. The chances of an intruder being a close enough match to one of those handful of people to fool the system are quite low. But the more comparisons you make, the greater the chance of an incorrect match. I did the math in a post a bit over a week ago, indicating the potential for hundreds of false accusations of travelers for every actual suspect identified.

So how does that protect us from terrorists entering the country?

It doesn't, says Andrew Clements, an information specialist at the University of Toronto.

To him, the new biometric border security is a chimera, comparable to Star Wars technology - "a big idea, but technically unsound." ...

"I don't think this is about security, it's about creating insecurity," Clements speculates. "It's like the orange and yellow alerts that keep Americans in a state of high anxiety. It's about keeping the public fearful because then it's more open to manipulation. And people go along with it because they see no alternative."

In short, this whole program is, assuming the best of intentions on the part of the White House, a total waste of billions of dollars, or - not assuming that - a way to amass and control data on increasing millions of ordinary people, with no way to know for sure what kind of information is being collected, how and for how long it will be stored, and with no known way to correct misinformation.

I feel safer already.

Footnote: Saving the best line for last:

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has stressed that the information gathered will be strictly governed by the U.S. Privacy Act and that "legitimate travellers have nothing to fear."

But [Peter] Hope-Tindall [technical director at Toronto's dataPrivacy Partners, leading biometric consultants] snorts at the claim: "Nothing to fear, nothing to hide was the motto of Stasi, the East German secret police."

Why do we keep having to look to foreign nations for insightful comments on our own follies?