Shouldn't they just do a fingerprint scan then?
There's been some rumblings of the "uniqueness" of fingerprints being far less than you'd think. Fingerprinting everyone who flies would just produce more false positives. The people that's bad for overlap a lot with the people who stand to benefit from invasive security theater.
As a child I recall an antique book on criminology which spoke glowingly of the reliability of fingerprints in investigations, and cited the unsuccessful defense of one convict who claimed (sometime in the late 19th century) that fingerprinting was a 'hazy and fallacious method imported from France, where many innocent men have been convicted by it." It is true that juries have an unfortunate tendency to believe in the first order results of any technical procedure, from ducking stools to DNA matching.
Google couldn't help me find the original source.
I'm ok with the idea of an opt-in program like GE. With that you understand that your data is being scrutinized and that you're voluntarily giving them your image data+your biodata. I'm not cool with this new introduction of an exit verification as that it's not a formal thing and it's just being pushed on the populous.
This kind of thing really makes you wonder when the American people became enemy combatants. (This has been happening for years)
The card is for crossing the border via car. You can use Global Entry at the NEXUS (when arriving from Canada) and SENTRI (inbound from Mexico) lanes, and the procedure there is you are to wave your RFID card across a reader as you approach the agent's booth.
As for Mexico, you just need to register your vehicle on the GOES/TTP portal to use your Global Entry card in the SENTRI lanes. (The vehicle inspection requirement was dropped recently.)
It isn't "opt-in" for non-US Americans, one of the reasons why I will probably never visit the US.
> This kind of thing really makes you wonder when the American people became enemy combatants. (This has been happening for years)
As opposed to everybody who just wants to visit the country? At this rate, I wouldn't be too surprised if 10 years from now they gonna require the full biometric program from foreign visitors: DNA, retina, face, fingerprints, speech samples and whatnot.
I do understand the need for security and proper authentification, I just think these are often used as an excuse for building some kind of police state with a vast database of people with all their attributes from physical (biometrics) to mental (crawling social media).
The last part might seem quite "out there", but it's quite real [0] and has already been for a while [1].
Also doesn't help that all of this reminds me way too much about biometric data programs the US military conducted in Iraq, still sitting on that data and using it [2].
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/01/us-approves-social-media-b...