Situation is getting worse for US citizens who would like permission to leave their "free" country

[pyesetz]

Two articles showed up on SlashDot today:

Story 1: US Citizens leaving the country via Detroit or Atlanta will have their fingerprints taken.  In the quoted article, there is no statement about what the government will do to US citizens who decline to be fingerprinted, but the two obvious choices are (a) prohibit them from leaving the country or (b) arrest them as presumed illegals, since surely any legitimate citizen would be only too willing to undergo this procedure.

Story 2: Cancer patient held at airport for four hours because he has no fingerprints.  The man is taking capecitabine, which causes fingerprint ridges to peel off the fingers.  Without fingerprints, he was presumed to be a security risk, although the putative correlation between having fingerprints and being aligned with American Corporatist interests is only poorly demonstrated in the literature.

Comments

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Admittedly, any sort of border security measure is at present compromised by the Mexican situation, but apart from that, why on earth would you (or anyone) object to identifying yourself when you cross a border? I've never understood that attitude.

In re #2, someone without fingerprints obviously needs to prove his identity in another way. That was done, and he got on with his trip. The whole thing's a minor, if rather odd, incident. I think his doctor ought to have said something to him, if that's a common side-effect of the drug.