I had images of urban-camo fatigued elite Special Forces soldiers sneaking into houses and fingerprinting the proles one by one for an ID database scheme.

Think I should recommend it to HM Gov. on a contractor basis? Save all this farse with "losing" data.

Norovirus causes a nasty illness called winter vomiting disease and it can easily be spread by touching items that an infected person has recently touched.

http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/articles/article.aspx?articleId=2438

So, in future it will be expected that everyone wanting to fly will have to place the index finger of their right hand on a small device that everyone in front of them has just touched. Then they will be placed directly in a seat without an opportunity to wash their hands. Then they will be given food that is eaten with their hands - such as peanuts.

Yum!

"So, in future it will be expected that everyone wanting to fly will have to place the index finger of their right hand on a small device that everyone in front of them has just touched. Then they will be placed directly in a seat without an opportunity to wash their hands."

Huh?

By the time you're tucking into your peanuts you'll probably have passed through several manually operated doors, used handrails to help yourself up/down stairs or on/off escalators, picked up a book or two in the airport bookshop, paid and received change for one or two items, opened the overhead locker to stash your hand baggage, and finally fastened/adjusted your seatbelt. One more touch isn't going to make a whole lot of difference :-)

[Black helicopter to denote high level of paranoia]

--

JG

You obviously either didn't read the article, or didn't understand it!

The whole idea of this system is that they fingerprint you TWICE.

Once at check-in when they associate this fingerprint with your bag.

The second time _at boarding_ so that they know that the person who checked the bag in is actually on the plane.

I have never been on a plane where you have to manually open any doors after the boarding check.

You are right that there are a number of things that you touch after boarding, but the only one that you _have to_ touch is the seat belt and unless you try every seat on the plane this will not have been contaminated by every other passenger. Also you have the choice as to how you hold the belt when doing it and can even wear gloves if you are fussy (as I would probably be at times when I know the norovirus is spreading widely).

What they are doing here is forcing cross-contamination of all passengers!

Oh, and before you suggest it, those alcohol wipes that get used for things like injections tend not to work on norovirus as it does not have a lipid envelope .

I was sceptical but having used this for domestic flights here in Norway I was quite impressed with the efficiency, and the low rate of problems in scanning people's fingerprints at the gate when boarding.

When using the fingerprint system, there is no need to show ID as this was only used before to verify your baggage drop was legitimate and then again at the gate that you are the person who did the drop.

There is a possible link with the baggage label scan (the label could obviously be traced to the passenger) which I think is done at the same time as the fingerprint scan upon baggage drop, but I'm not certain about this.

As a passenger it saved time and messing around with ID or even boarding cards at the gate. It is all done with the finger and boarding is quicker and easier than before.

It should be remembered that, in Norway at least, it is a small country and we are all linked through a person number to most automated systems. You can look up a phone number having only a person's name, and find out who that missed call is from by typing the number in to a reverse phone directory (even mobiles). So fingerprint ID doesn't seem like all that big a deal..