Peter Swire, a guest blogger on ThinkProgress has written a post about Michael Chertoff’s denial that fingerprints are not “personal data.”
Wow. Michael Chertoff, Secretary of Homeland Security, used to be a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals AND was an assistant U.S. Attorney General. I thought you had to know stuff have jobs like that?
Recently, Chertoff was in Canada discussing the so-called “Server in the Sky” program, which would share iris, palm and fingerprint information between the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia. Scary business all by itself, check out the link.
In a recent briefing with Canadian press (which has yet to be picked up in the U.S.), Chertoff made
the startling statement that fingerprints are “not particularly private”:
QUESTION: Some are raising that the privacy aspects of this thing, you know, sharing of that kind of data, very personal data, among four countries is quite a scary thing.
SECRETARY CHERTOFF: Well, first of all, a fingerprint is hardly personal data because you leave it on glasses and silverware and articles all over the world, they’re like footprints. They’re not particularly private.
You know what? This is not a mistake for someone like Chertoff (see his job history, above), this is a blatant lie. He knows very well that fingerprints are personal data. His own Department of Homeland Security disagrees with him:
In its definition of “personally identifiable information” — the information that triggers a Privacy Impact Assessment when used by government — the Department specifically lists: “biometric identifiers (e.g., fingerprints).”
But let’s not let truth or facts get in the way of what we want, right Mr Chertoff?
Here’s why fingerprints and other personal data are “extremely personal data.”
A quick web search on “fake fingerprints” turns up cheap and easy methods for do-it-at-home fake fingerprints. As discussed by noted security expert Bruce Schneier, one technique is available for under $10. It was tried “against eleven commercially available fingerprint biometric systems, and was able to reliably fool all of them.” Secretary Chertoff either doesn’t know about these clear results or chooses to ignore them. He said in Canada: “It’s very difficult to fake a fingerprint.”
Monte, I’ll take the box marked “chooses to ignore.” It makes one wonder if the DHS has been treating our “extremely personal data” in such an off-hand manner all along, eh?
5 Comments
April 16, 2008 at 10:55 am
Well hell – by that logic, phone numbers and social security numbers aren’t personal data either. There are digits all over print media and the Internet that could randomly arrange themselves into your “identifying information.” Are we to ban pocket calculators on the off chance that your cell phone number appears in some tangent or cosine somewhere?
April 16, 2008 at 11:22 am
Imbeded micro chip’s installed at your dentest or eye doctor’s for free….No telling what these nut job’s are thinking up next instead of keeping us safe they will be on monater watch of every thing we do 24/7..They need to know where all of us are so they can round us up….When they open up the camp’s and come and get me I want to be in a warmer climate…Wonder if I will get a chance to choose..LoL….Not likely…Blessings
April 16, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Your retinas are now state property. Blink into the camera, once.
April 19, 2008 at 11:31 pm
This fucking crackhead. I’m so sick of this tyrranical nonsense from this administration. I knew they were dumb, I just didn’t realize they couldn’t count to 8. Go away you dummies, don’t you know the gig is up? You all suck and we know it.
April 19, 2008 at 11:34 pm
[...] Chertoff is a fucking crackhead. Here I was worried about giving away easily found out things, like my social security number, home phone number, banking information and credit card numbers to scammers. I should have been more worried that my fingerprints aren’t considered to be personal information by the government. Link and outrage here. [...]