U.S. to fingerprint foreign sailors at ports

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Mar 31, 2006 by Jim Krane Associated Press

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans to collect digital fingerprints of merchant sailors arriving at American ports, believing that will improve security and allow more seafarers to visit the United States, a department official said.

Robert A. Mocny, deputy director of the department's visitor technology program, said Tuesday that immigration inspectors at major cargo terminals would be given handheld scanners that photograph a sailor and capture his fingerprints.

The data then would be checked against the 1.5 million names on U.S. lists of terror suspects, criminal fugitives and immigration violators.

Mocny was speaking in Dubai, where he addressed a conference on biometric security technology. Biometrics involves the measurement of unique human characteristics like fingerprints and irises.

Digital fingerprint scanners already are being used at U.S. cruise ship ports. Mocny said the department is testing the scanners on passengers at American airports and soon would expand the tests to cargo ports.

Already, foreigners who receive U.S. visas must submit fingerprints. Data from those scans will be embedded in U.S. visas placed in their passports.

"We think this technology has some merit for closing some of the loops," Mocny said. "We don't yet have that type of infrastructure in our cargo ports of entry."

The scanners would allow shore leave for many merchant seamen now unable to pass U.S. immigration, he said. Foreign sailors on ships whose cargo, ownership or other features create suspicion often are refused permission to come ashore. Some of those quarantined aboard their vessels even have U.S. visas, he said.

"These are guys who've been at sea for three or four months who cannot disembark because they don't have the documentation or don't present a low enough profile to be allowed ashore," Mocny said. "It's a chance for these guys to get off and have some fun."

Port security has been an important issue in the United States since a Dubai company's purchase of a British firm gave it control of six American ports. An outcry in the Congress led the Dubai company, DP World, to decide to sell the U.S. operations to an American firm.

President Bush, along with many in the United Arab Emirates, lambasted Congress' opposition to the deal, saying it smacked of anti-Arab bias.

Mocny said his visit to Dubai was planned before the ports controversy.

He said the Emirates authorities had showed him their Iris Expellee Tracking System for immigrant workers, which is said to be the world's largest database of iris scans. The U.S. company that designed it, Iridian Technologies, says it contains more than 1 million iris images.

Low-wage laborers granted visas and work permits in the Emirates must submit iris scans as part of their registration process. New entrants are checked against a database of those arrested and expelled from the country to ensure that deportees do not re-enter under false identities.