overload

"The US says longer queues are a small price to pay for greater safety "
27 more nations have been added to the list of people who have to have their digital photos taken, and inkless fingerprints made as they enter america. (story here) thats 13 million people a year.
now i am not saying that america shouldn't do it. it is more a question of whether or not what they are doing is going to have an effect. true they stopped cat stevens from getting into america (but lets be honest there are a lot more artists ahead of him you just shouldn't be letting into america - are you listening donovan ?).
interestingly the story about the fingerprint crackdown came a few days after the story about the fbi having something in the region of 123,000 hours of untranslated tapes of conversations that may or may not be concerned with potential terrorist attacks on the usa.

"Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 123,000 hours of audio in languages associated with terrorists still had not been reviewed as of April 2004, the audit found. In addition, more than 370,000 hours of audio associated with counterintelligence had not been reviewed. " (the guardian)

so all this additional information from fingerprints etc will more than likely just go into that big data black hole and never be much use to man or beast.

and is it only me - but as far as i can tell all identity cards and biometric passports will do is allow the authorities to confirm that the dead guy was indeed mr x (unless of course it was a particularly stupid terrorist whole decided to put "bomber" in the occupation part of his application forms.
i don't profess to be an expert but i think that if you are going to strap a bomb to yourself or get on a plane with the idea of crashing it into a big building then you are not thinking like me and you and more than likely you are not going to be deterred by the fact that you have a biometric passport that says you are joe shmoe (remember the identity on the passport can be whatever you want as long as the biometrics match yours..... not to mention that these things will be forged, or even worse given that they will be issued, created and controlled by private business the technology will be available for sale at some point.... or it won't work!) when really you are peter schmuck because when they bomb goes boom or the Plane goes crash you ain't going to be around to worry.

the need for sensible and effective counter terrorist mechanisms is recognised by all but trying to find that needle in a very very large haystack while riding roughshod over civil liberties is perhaps too much a price to pay for an ineffective defense against terror.