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There's an interesting article at Wired explaining how Homeland Security computer systems failed due to poor security practices; namely deliberately avoiding patch installs. What gets me is not the security issue though; I can understand that to some degree, though it was definitely a bad call by their IT people.

On page one, the articles says that "The system has processed more than 52 million visitors, and allowed border officials to intercept more than 1,000 wanted criminals and immigration violators".

That means that for every criminal or 'immigration violator' (how many of those were students overstaying a student visa, or something equally HORRIBLE OMG) there are 52,000 innocent people who are being stored in a database, and having all their personal information recorded. The US-VISIT system is invasive. It requires fingerprints, digital photos, and a bunch of additional information to all be stored in a US Government controlled computer system. And it's all to catch 0.002% (literally) of the people that cross the border.

Isn't there another way? I would not be excited if (e.g.) I had to get fingerprinted just to visit Paris.

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