[lbo-talk] Brazil Starts Fingerprinting U.S. Travelers

[Dwayne Monroe]

Sauce for the paranoid, bullying gander to the North.

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from Yahoo! - http://tinyurl.com/35acz


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Brazil Starts Fingerprinting U.S. Travelers
	


BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - Brazilian police on
Thursday began fingerprinting and photographing U.S.
visitors on orders of a judge who compared planned
U.S. security controls on travelers from Brazil and
other nations to Nazi horrors.

Federal Judge Julier Sebastiao da Silva, furious at
U.S. plans to fingerprint and photograph millions of
visitors on entering the United States, ordered
Brazil's authorities do the same to U.S. citizens
starting on Thursday.

"We've begun doing this," said a Federal Police
spokeswoman at Brazil's Guarulhos International
Airport in Sao Paulo.

The judge's order came after Brazil's Federal Public
Ministry filed a complaint in court over the U.S.
measure.

The US-VISIT system is meant to identify people who
have violated immigration controls, have criminal
records or belong to groups listed as terrorist
organizations by the United States.

Starting on Monday, people who need visas to enter the
United States will be digitally fingerprinted and
photographed when they pass through immigration at
major U.S. airports and seaports.

The measure does not apply to citizens of 27, mainly
European, nations who do not need a visa to enter the
United States.

"I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening
human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and
worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis,"
said Sebastiao da Silva in the court order released on
Tuesday.

Officials at the U.S. Embassy in Brazil were not
immediately available to comment.

Federal Police in Sao Paulo were not able to confirm
how many ports of entry had begun the controls and how
many U.S. citizens had been fingerprinted and
photographed so far.

The order by Sebastiao da Silva, a regional federal
judge in the state of Mato Grosso, can be overturned
by Brazil's justice system if he is considered to be
acting outside of his powers, a Federal Police
spokesman said.

Brazilian Foreign Ministry officials were not
available to comment on the ruling, which urges the
government to pressure the United States to exempt
Brazilians from the US-VISIT system.