Battleangel

Another bad move.

Kingston’s closest U.S. border crossing will employ high-tech radio frequency technology to monitor visitors from other countries who want to enter the States from Canada – a move that alarms both a Kingston privacy expert and an immigration specialist.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said this week that the crossing between Lansdowne and Alexandria Bay, N.Y., will be one of three Canada-U.S. land borders to require non-Canadians to carry wireless devices as part of a pilot project.

Boing Boing says …

Starting this week, three US border crossings will begin to tag visitors to America with wireless RFID-cards, which contain visitors’ personally identifying information and can be read from 12 yards away. The only exempted visitors are Canadians who are not on a US business visa or engaged to an American. If this program is “successful” (who the fuck knows what constitutes a “success” here — maybe Homeland Security has a divinating machine that can tell it whether fewer terrorists have entered the country this quarter than last?) this program will go live at every border crossing, in addition to the current practice of fingerprinting and photographing visitors (incidentally, the fact that the DHS had started to fingerprint me when I came home to San Francisco played a major role in my decision to abandon my US work visa and move to the UK — friends don’t fingerprint friends).

But if scaring people from visiting and working in the US is the game, I’m all for it. It serves me perfectly.