Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US Government demands direct police access to European biometric data [pdf]

digit.so36.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 432 posts

Re: US Government demands direct police access to European biometric data [pdf]

#381

Post by still_grokking »

InTheArena wrote: post #62

Reading through the slides, it appears that what has been discussed is sharing signature and fingerprints for travel into the USA. There is a lot of weasel words, but it's probably worth nothing that the USA currently collects this information for foreign nationals coming into the USA (as the EU does for Americans traveling into the EU). This is being done in the context of a DB query as part of the e VISA applicatio…

> […] but it's probably worth nothing that the USA currently collects this information for foreign nationals coming into the USA (as the EU does for Americans traveling into the EU).

The EU does? That's news.

Can someone bake this claim by some source?

Re: US Government demands direct police access to European biometric data [pdf]

#382

Post by miohtama »

omgomgomgomg wrote: post #184
pessimizer wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that hyperbole is possible when you're discussing the necessity of having worldwide biometric "terrorist" lists that countries like Saudi Arabia would participate in. ----- edit: How would you code "terrorism through public demonstrations of driving while female" or "terrorism through being Yemen?" "Terrorism though applying for a marriage license after being mildly critical in the WaPo."

Finance background here. All these PEP, sanction lists, ofac monitoring, financial sanction lists already exist and every company with a worthwile monetary turnover ever facing an audit runs these background checks. The laws are there, they are called the aml directives, the lists are there. And most of the entries there are provided by eitjer uk or us entities, youll usually find foreign military personells data the…

This.

There is nothing scientific about anti-money laundering. It is one of the ways modern nations hang themselves with self-inflictes inefficiencies for very little gains. Because it's run by police organisations, you cannot criticise it as you would be labelled as a friend of terrorists.

Re: US Government demands direct police access to European biometric data [pdf]

#383

Post by still_grokking »

jeremyjh wrote: post #340
satellite2 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are blacklists, i.e. known criminals. The US is asking for whitelists, i.e. everyone and without motives

No it isn’t. There is no bulk access, just responses to queries of biometric data for persons of interest.

Sure, sure, and the query looks like:

  SELECT * FROM Person JOIN Biometric_Datum ON Person.id = Biometric_Datum.person_id;
See, no bulk access. Just a response to a query, only once an day, or so.

Re: US Government demands direct police access to European biometric data [pdf]

#384

Post by vixen99 »

ubercore wrote: post #302
vinay427 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (as the EU does for Americans traveling into the EU) This doesn't seem true unless the US citizen is resident in a Schengen area country or (as a technicality) is also an EU/Schengen area citizen, as the EU seems slightly more in favor of government collection of biometric data for automated immigration purposes. I'm not sure about the reverse, as even the CBP seems to be moving towards facial recognition in place…

I didn't have to provide a fingerprint or signature to travel to Europe, only when I applied for residence in a Schengen country.

That's changing from May 2023 with 'ETIAS'. "non-EU visitors to the block, including UK nationals since Brexit, will need to register information about themselves prior to travel. As well as passport details, automated barriers at borders will eventually gather biometric information such as facial image data and fingerprints. ETIAS will be mandatory for citizens of such countries as the UK, United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada".

Re: US Government demands direct police access to European biometric data [pdf]

#385

Post by still_grokking »

PYTHONDJANGO wrote: post #377
InTheArena wrote: post #62

Reading through the slides, it appears that what has been discussed is sharing signature and fingerprints for travel into the USA. There is a lot of weasel words, but it's probably worth nothing that the USA currently collects this information for foreign nationals coming into the USA (as the EU does for Americans traveling into the EU). This is being done in the context of a DB query as part of the e VISA applicatio…

Your thinking seems to be based on the idea that "the government" are the good guys. This is extremely naive - and you even mention an example of a government that does not respect basic human rights. These tools will be abused and must be rolled backed to save freedom and democracy. Authoritarian states working together on a techno-based total control vision is a very bad development. Thinking about it, I do not und…

> it reads like astroturfing propaganda work

The "but we just do what the others do" claim (which is afaik false) also made this seem fishy to me.

Especially as every hacker knows: When there is data, this data will be abused, sooner or later. There hasn't been any recorded exception to this rule. Anywhere. Ever. It's like a law of nature.

That's why the zeroes rule of data protection reads: Do not produce data. Only not existing data can't be abused.

Re: US Government demands direct police access to European biometric data [pdf]

#386

Post by anonymous344 »

Look at the map of the earth and notice how isolated and far away USA is from the rest of us.

Why do we let USA companies and military & gov. puppets do their destroying outside of USA? Why ? Europe and asia should ban USA and all of it's companies and specially the nato/military to enter or steal & destroy anything from outside usa.

Why do we let them do this destruction ?

Re: US Government demands direct police access to European biometric data [pdf]

#387

Post by vixen99 »

Muromec wrote: post #357
kmeisthax wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because sovereignty ends at borders. Europeans want to vacation in the US. The US demands biometric authentication upon crossing the border. So you either give them that data or the US stops letting Europeans in. And I doubt Europe is going to be any better at not demanding biometric data than the US is, because Europe has the same underlying incentives to do so (i.e. a restrictive immigration system, a large portion…

EU doesn't enforce fingerprints scan on the border most of the time. It's very strange, as all the infrastructure is there, passports and alien ids have fingerprints included in them, there are fingerprint-scanning machines on border crossing points, yet I'm yet to see it being used ever.

The European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS) will be in force by November 2023. 'The completely electronic system will keep track of visitors who do not require a full visa to enter Schengen Zone countries for the purposes of travel for up to 90 days'.

https://etias.com/

Re: US Government demands direct police access to European biometric data [pdf]

#388

Post by still_grokking »

keewee7 wrote: post #359
hammock wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that 9/11 was in part a Saudi kingdom operation, I’m not convinced having more US-Saudi cooperation would have helped Edit: what’s with the downvotes?

>Edit: what’s with the downvotes? You're pushing a baseless conspiracy theory. There is no evidence that Saudi authorities were involved in 9/11.

We live in interesting times. What was yesterday claimed to be a "baseless conspiracy theory" is a factual truth just the next day.

Welcome to reality.

Re: US Government demands direct police access to European biometric data [pdf]

#389

Post by still_grokking »

wolfi1 wrote: post #100
InTheArena wrote: post #62

Reading through the slides, it appears that what has been discussed is sharing signature and fingerprints for travel into the USA. There is a lot of weasel words, but it's probably worth nothing that the USA currently collects this information for foreign nationals coming into the USA (as the EU does for Americans traveling into the EU). This is being done in the context of a DB query as part of the e VISA applicatio…

the problem with such treaties is they are very shady in their wording and if there is a possibility to interpret it in this direction it will be interpreted in this direction

That's the purpose of the shady wording in the first place.

Or does anybody really think things get formulated those ways "by chance" or "by incompetence"?

Never blame on stupidity what you can be blamed on malice, in case of institutions…

Re: US Government demands direct police access to European biometric data [pdf]

#390

Post by data_maan »

InTheArena wrote: post #62

Reading through the slides, it appears that what has been discussed is sharing signature and fingerprints for travel into the USA. There is a lot of weasel words, but it's probably worth nothing that the USA currently collects this information for foreign nationals coming into the USA (as the EU does for Americans traveling into the EU). This is being done in the context of a DB query as part of the e VISA applicatio…

Nope, hyperbole needs to be strengthened.

Such legislation would basically allow syphoning off all the data of everyone from the EU databases. They could (and would) just go through all possible name combination an see if it's a hit (I'm sure there will be no safeguards in place for that; oh, whoops, the British did this already when Brexit happened).

The precious data will then be stored in a "commercial cloud" service. What could possibly go wrong here?...

Post reply on HN