{"id":2549,"date":"2017-03-29T10:23:05","date_gmt":"2017-03-29T15:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/?p=2549"},"modified":"2017-03-29T10:23:06","modified_gmt":"2017-03-29T15:23:06","slug":"in-the-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/in-the-system\/","title":{"rendered":"In the System"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

I sat in the windowless bowels of O\u2019Hare Airport waiting for my face-to-face Global Entry interview.\u00a0 Nick had urged me to sign up not because I deserved recognition as a trusted traveler, but solely to bypass TSA and immigration lines.\u00a0 I have objected to such elitist programs on principle \u2013 line-cutting in the grade school cafeteria was my first brush with social injustice.\u00a0 Now such behavior has been institutionalized for those willing to pay the $100 fee.<\/p>\n

My interview was quick.\u00a0 A snoozy customs officer asked me a few perfunctory questions about my job and then casually asked me to place my hand on the digital fingerprint scanner.<\/p>\n

I hesitated, but I had made the trip to O\u2019Hare and had paid the fee.\u00a0 I set aside my aversion to line-cutting and placed my hand on the sensor.\u00a0 Within fifteen seconds another uneasiness set in.\u00a0 I imagined my fingerprints \u2013 my right-hand pointer through pinkie \u2013 winging their way across the country into the growing FBI database.\u00a0 I was now indelibly, inexorably, inextricably, embedded\u201cin the system.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yes, the government can identify me in a variety of ways \u2013 through my social security number, driver\u2019s license registration, and, at least on Law and Order, the detectives have easy access to my bank records, credit card purchases, and telephone calls.\u00a0 These are all just assigned numbers, but my fingerprints are in a totally different category.\u00a0 They announce my physical presence, from birth to beyond death and I had just blithely given them away \u2013 all for the sake of convenience.\u00a0 \u201cThe man\u201d has me in his grasp. \u00a0We are told that fingerprints are the best way to safeguard our identity, but it is also the easiest and most definitive way to reveal it.\u00a0 In this jittery post-Snowden society, who do I fear most \u2013 terrorists, identity thieves or my government?<\/p>\n

I had the same queasy feeling thirty years ago, when the government required my fingerprints to work at their VA hospital.\u00a0 In this pre-digital era, the only record was my ink-stained tips pressed onto a flimsy card.\u00a0 In the sprawling VA system who could possibly want a smudgy card from a newly-minted physician? \u00a0I felt sure my card would promptly get lost.\u00a0 Now all prints are durably digitized and stored in the FBI\u2019s tentacled database.\u00a0 Originally civilian fingerprints, such as mine, were kept separate from criminal fingerprints.\u00a0 The FBI has merged the databases; both are searchable.\u00a0 In addition to the FBI, states and large cities maintain their own databases.<\/p>\n

Fingerprints as a means of identity go back thousands of years.\u00a0 The Chinese first used them for identification as early as 200 BC. \u00a0In the early 1900s US detectives started to collect and use fingerprints in criminal investigations once more sophisticated classification systems were introduced.\u00a0 For example, fingerprints fall into three basic patterns \u2013 loops, whorls and arches. \u00a0\u00a0These patterns can be used for exclusionary purposes.\u00a0 However, a definitive match requires further detail, based on the fingerprint\u2019s \u201cminutiae,\u201d i.e. where the individual friction ridge ends, bifurcates or is an isolated island.\u00a0 When detectives refer to a \u201cten-point match\u201d they are referring to the minutiae.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Primates (humans, apes, monkeys) and, oddly enough koala bears, are the only animals with fingerprints, which may represent the vestige of scales used for grasping.\u00a0 Fingerprints emerge as early as ten weeks of gestation and are fully developed, complete with minutiae, by 16 weeks \u2013 a type of research that seems both esoteric and grisly.\u00a0 However, genetics dictate only the presence of fingerprints, but not their specific pattern.\u00a0 Even the fingerprints of identical twins are distinct, an observation that escaped the editors of a recent Law and Order episode.<\/p>\n

Embryologists have proposed a variety of environmental factor impacting the pattern, such as mechanical forces in the cramped uterus.\u00a0 These theories remain unproven, but the bottom line is that the multitude of factors makes two identical fingerprints statistically impossible.\u00a0 I imagine my origins as a fetus, my paw-like hands waving\u00a0in the watery soup, skimming along the silken veil of the amniotic membrane. \u00a0And all the while my friction ridges were whorling, looping, arching, and bifurcating to create the most visible testimony of my uniqueness.<\/p>\n

It was time to spend quality moments with my fingertips.\u00a0 I pressed each one into an ink pad, but the resulting print was too smudgy, and I became jealous of high resolution digital images.\u00a0 I borrowed a botanist\u2019s magnifying loupe and by adjusting the light and angles, I could briefly see the illusive designs.\u00a0 I was besotted.\u00a0 Elegant loops leaned left and right on index and pinkie fingers, and my ring and swear fingers featured utterly stunning whorls.\u00a0 Tightly compact, perfectly symmetrical, my whorled fingerprint is a pattern seen throughout nature, such as in the coils of a fiddlehead fern, the snail, the seeds of a sunflower, the curl of a centipede.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The proportions of these coils, known as Fibonaci\u2019s golden ratio, are thought to be visually appealing and resonate with the human psyche.\u00a0 The golden ratio has captivated mathematicians, philosophers, biologists, architects, and artists such as Van Gogh, who painted not only sunflowers but fingerprint-like whorls in his Starry Night.\u00a0 I was thrilled to have my own personal golden ratio right at my fingertips.<\/p>\n

My close-up view made my fingerprints deeply personal, but our legal system does not share my big warm and fuzzy embrace.\u00a0 Fingerprints are held in low regard compared to the theoretically more personal DNA sample.\u00a0 The \u201cinvasive\u201d oral swab requires probable cause, judicial review, and a court order.\u00a0 In contrast, a fingerprint is held to vague standard of \u201creasonable suspicion.\u201d No court order is necessary.<\/p>\n

The courts have acknowledged that \u201creasonable suspicion\u201d cannot be objectively defined, stating only \u201ca reasonable person in the same circumstances could suspect that a person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in a criminal activity.\u201d If one accepts the logical premise that the leader of the free world should set the standard for a reasonable man, well then, get ready.\u00a0 The discretion of police has just ballooned to an alarming degree.<\/p>\n

Mobile fingerprinting devices now make it easier for police to act on their \u201creasonable suspicion.\u201d\u00a0 For example, the police cannot haul someone down to the precinct for the express purpose of taking a fingerprint \u2013 this is considered an unlawful detention prohibited by the fourth amendment.\u00a0 Mobile fingerprinting has removed that check.\u00a0 Imagine a big barroom brawl.\u00a0 I get caught up in the melee as the police storm in and demand everyone\u2019s fingerprint based on their squishy interpretation of reasonable suspicion.\u00a0 My fingerprint is whisked off to the FBI and BOOM! up pops an outstanding warrant.<\/p>\n

The above scenario would never apply to me because I rarely go into bars, but I do feel the slippery earth trembling and shifting beneath me.<\/p>\n

My debut Global Entry experience occurred this winter as we arrived from New Zealand.\u00a0 I followed the signs to an expansive bank of idle kiosks.\u00a0 Nick had only applied for the inferior TSA designation and so was shunted off to the general line.\u00a0 I felt my familiar elitist line-cutting guilt as I saw his head bobbing along the snaking line.\u00a0 I pressed my passport on the scanner and a light flash took a dazed gap-mouthed picture of me.\u00a0 Then the finger print scanner emitted a sickly green light.\u00a0 I hesitated. \u00a0But then I thought what the hell, I\u2019m already in the system.\u00a0 I put my hand on the scanner and passed through quickly.\u00a0 Ten minutes later Nick joined me.\u00a0 I had sacrificed my fingerprints for the convenience of ten measly minutes.<\/p>\n

Iris scans and facial recognition are the next biometric technologies on the horizon.\u00a0 Will the courts offer them the same protection as a DNA sample, or lump them in with the humble fingerprint?\u00a0 Will it be probable cause or reasonable suspicion?\u00a0 One thing for sure, I will not willingly give them up to \u201cthe man\u201d \u2013 I will safeguard my identity \u2013 unless of course there a convenience factor of at least thirty to forty minutes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\nFollow Liza Blue on: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>Share: \"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  I sat in the windowless bowels of O\u2019Hare Airport waiting for my face-to-face Global Entry interview.\u00a0 Nick had urged me to sign up not because I deserved recognition as a trusted traveler, but solely to bypass TSA and immigration … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-what-i-did"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVc8-F7","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2549"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2554,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2549\/revisions\/2554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}