DHS to Green Card Holders: Fingerprints and Photos, Please

The Bush administration has a parting gift for lawful permanent residents of the United States: starting next year, they will be subject to the same biometric collection program used to track foreign visitors.

That's right. "Green card" holders will get the same treatment as other visitors. According to a notice posted in the Federal Register, the Department of Homeland Security will collect digital fingerprints and photographs for US-VISIT, the security screen created after 9/11 to checks the identities of visitors against a terror watchlist and other criminal databases. The new rule, the notice says, "expands the population of aliens who will be subject to US-VISIT requirements to nearly all aliens," excepting Canadians and a few others.

Nextgov has an excellent quote from the American Civil Liberties Union's Barry Steinhardt, who notes that the government is expanding the collection of biometric data on lawful residents, while it has yet to set up an exit system to track foreigners leaving the country.

"There's still the irony that the government keeps expanding the US VISIT program but never built the exit system that is supposed to be built," Steinhardt says. "They know when people come in but don't know if they've left."

Wired

Sort of like learning to fly, but not to land.