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Fingerprint Initiative Abroad Turns Up Hundreds Arrested In United States

By David Badertscher, PLL

Source: Crime & Justice News

"In the six-and-a-half years that the U.S. government

has been fingerprinting insurgents, detainees and

ordinary people in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of

Africa, hundreds have turned out to share an

unexpected background, FBI and military officials said.

They have criminal arrest records in the United States,

reports the Washington Post. The records suggest

that potential enemies abroad know a great deal

about the United States because many of them have

lived here, officials said. The matches also reflect the

power of sharing data across agencies and even

countries, data that links an identity to a distinguishing

human characteristic such as a fingerprint.

The fingerprinting of detainees overseas began as ad-

hoc FBI and U.S. military efforts shortly after the Sept.

11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It has since grown into a

government-wide push to build the world's largest

database of known or suspected terrorist fingerprints.

Fingerprints are being beamed in via satellite from

places as far-flung as the jungles of Zamboanga in

the southern Philippines; Bogota, Colombia; Iraq; and

Afghanistan. Other allies, such as Sweden, have

contributed prints. Civil libertarians have raised

concerns about whether people on the watch lists

have been appropriately determined to be terrorists, a

process that senior government officials acknowledge

is an art, not a science."

Washington Post - http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=0016gOyz-llJNLVbO0jiqXop16i3zNwUfemwHlTJr8b2ICpgFEUuY1Qw1jlYzc8Pe6sQmNKeJ9RHrb2b3sRuhjv-ekGSiajTil0WruPW380vJ3qUiCYLObADHfMEULvpdffKejYAFhQeH_Oz4VR-UFtHkzeFBDa-nylJ7CYSlJ7B0uBGA8reyllTB0j58WgrrHBbVhAIg6_traaq-pKWXKtLzs7dhTqUssijZvYwXNZMPY=

Full post as published by New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library on July 07, 2008 (boomark / email).