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Comment by scoot | Hacker News Reader

Given that the USCIS (and so, presumably, the NSA) already has the fingerprints of every visitor to the USA, and (as I understand it) any US citizen with a drivers license, I'm not sure I understand what harvesting fingerprint signatures from the iPhone would achieve.

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It goes the other way around. Because the government has almost everyone's fingerprint on file already, it is important to them that fingerprint scanners become a widespread method of authentication.

Making sure the new locks fit all these old keys we have lying around, basically. Standard government cost saving measure.

Hmm, I don't remember giving my fingerprints to anyone for a driver's license.

You're right, apparently not all states require this.

Most do not. But some of the most populous do. California and Texas are among the list that require thumbprints.

California, Colorado, Georgia, and Texas.

Not true about drivers licenses in most ( I really want to say all) state. Even covertly, I doubt they could collect them. You don't, at least in any state I've dealt with, give them documents they could keep and pull fingerprints off.

In the US, the only one gets fingerprinted are by being arrested or for certain back ground checks( e.g ones for teachers, some bank employees, and security clearances).

They collect them in OK, CA and GA. Probably more. I'm not even American and that took four seconds to find on Google.

TX too.

As I've pointed out in another thread, Canadian citizens visiting the U.S. are not automatically fingerprinted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US-VISIT http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/usvisit/usvisit_edu_us_ca...

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