U.S. increases fingerprints IDs at airports (2008)

Posting this to HN because of the following paragraphs, which show the amount of stuff collected, and the length of time it has been collected and stored.

I'm not sure if Americans know about this?

> The U.S. government has been collecting digital fingerprints and photographs of nearly all non-citizens aged 14 and up entering the country since 2004, officials said, in a Homeland Security program called US-VISIT, at a cost of $1.7 billion.

> [...] On an average day, almost 14,400 international visitors undergo the fingerprinting process at Kennedy, officials said.

> More than 2,000 criminal and visa fraud cases have been detected by the screening process, introduced in response to security concerns following the attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. officials said.

Roughly they've scanned fingerprints for 36,792,000 visitors (who may be repeat visitors), and caught more than 2,000 people. (Between 2001/9/11 and 2008/9/11.)