SAS extends fingerprint ID system for domestic flights Swedish airline SAS is extending a biometric security program on national flights from Stockholm and Gothenburg and will roll it out to international flights in the near future. Approximately 50 per cent of all passengers on SAS's domestic flights travel will be able to use the biometric solution, the company announced this …
"The scheme is supposed to help match luggage with passengers. Airlines are obliged by law to match passengers with bags, a measure intended to make it harder to sabotage an aircraft."
Two hoops and a line, with a scar on the 3rd line in from the second hoop.
Do you know whose fingerprint that is? No? If you looked at their ID card you would know who they were? And you need to look at the ID card anyway to match person to ticket. So what does the fingerprint add? Nothing!
I'll give SAS a miss I think. I don't see why I would give them information they don't need to know.
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..
I don't mind this sort of thing so long as it comes with garantees that the data is only used for the stated purpose, nothing more.
Of course this never happens. There's always a copy sent to the NSA or they keep it for a couple of years, "just in case"...etc.
...and still has the faintest hope of getting ID cards to fly, this is how you go about 'non-compulsorily' sneaking them in. I'm as biometric-sceptic as the next Vulture, but when flying back home from northern Sweden the other month, I found myself dutifully pressing my digit on the pad when requested. Followed shortly by a 'what the hell did I just do?' moment, but when you're holding a toddler in one arm and a variety of coats and bags in the other (having just been made to check his lightweight folding pushchair into the hold because SAS don't want to pay someone to collect it from the gate any more) while your wife sets about the critical task of rounding up everything you own that is or might possibly be a liquid in order to cram into the regulation plastic bag the ones that are security-acceptable and neck the ones that aren't (it was water, honest), then holding the whole process up in order to discuss a point of principle about the creeping erosion of privacy with an unimpressed checkin operative doesn't always seem that wise.
It didn't in any way help them to match us up with our luggage, which was still on the ground at Luleå 24 hours later because the (compulsory) automatic checkin machine had apparently got out of sync with its label printer.
A couple of weeks ago I was on an SAS domestic Norway flight and lady at the check-in gave up trying to scan my fingerprint after the 3rd try. They see an image on their screen and have to decide/get told? if it's a good scan, I'm not sure what was wrong on this occasion, it's worked in the past.
It meant I had to queue at the gate whereas most others were able to stick their finger to the scanner and go straight through.
What happens if it's compulsory? surely they have to have a backup option.
GUMI (Give Us More Icons)!
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