In oder to facilitate the war on terror, America fingerprints all incoming foreigners, here is how much it costs:
“Pressing to meet that goal, the Homeland Security Department last year awarded one of the most ambitious technology contracts in the war on terror — a 10-year deal estimated at up to $10 billion — to the global consulting firm Accenture. In return, the company and its subcontractors promised to create a “virtual border” that would electronically screen millions of foreign travelers.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/22/AR2005052200613.html
For $10 billion you get a system that doesn’t work. Here’s the info on that:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/05/050516192544.htm
But fear not. The system is being upgraded. Now people who want to enter America will have all ten fingers scanned:
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/12/10/visitors.fingerprints/
Despite the $10 billion system having been a failure, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff still boasts about the previous system:
“Since we’ve begun collecting biometrics in 2000, and that was just the two prints, we’ve stopped almost 2,000 criminals and immigration violators based on their fingerprints alone. Let me give you some examples. Here at Dulles airport, a man arrived here with all of the appropriate travel documents, but when his fingerprints were collected, they matched a different name, the name of someone on our watch list. Although the person claimed never to have been arrested on changes related to a controlled substance and claimed never to have been deported, his fingerprints told us a different story. Biometrics revealed that we had deported the person after we had arrested him for conspiracy to distribute a narcotic controlled substance. And today, he is being held at a nearby U.S. Marshal facility for criminal prosecution. In February of this year, Oakland police and San Francisco ICE officers were contacted regarding victims of alien smuggling. Fingerprints were lifted from a suspect’s car to a local motel used by the smugglers. The prints were sent to US-VISIT to be run against all latent prints and a positive match was made to a person with an immigration criminal history. He was placed on a watch list and later arrested by the border patrol in Arizona. And in 2002, a person obtained a visa and visited the U.S. Three years later, he attempted to return to the U.S., but was refused admission because he had not complied with the terms of his original 2002 visit. In 2007, he wanted to come back again. So he applied for a visa at a U.S. embassy using fraudulent documents. When his fingerprints were checked against US-VISIT’s watch list, as part of the application process, it was revealed that he had previously been denied entry to the U.S. and that he had committed fraud. And therefore, he was denied a visa.”
http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/releases/pr_1197326672447.shtm
Note, he doesn’t provide an example of a terrorist being stopped. No security clearance perhaps?
Anyway, that’s 2000 people who were probably doing things that at least some argue they should be free to do anyway; sell drugs and sell their labor. $10 billion dollars divided by 2000 people puts the price tag at $5,000,000 per “criminal” stopped. I would guess that’s a conservative estimate.
And people think Ron Paul is radical? I guess common sense is as well.
