Japan to Fingerprint Foreigners on Entry

The police state's noose continues to cinch around travelers' necks

October 8, 2007

All foreigners entering Japan are to be digitally fingerprinted and photographed on entry starting November 20th according to recent reports. The information is to be kept on record for possible future criminal investigations and is to be taken from all foreigners entering the country including tourists and those with working visas. Only permanent residents, guests of the state or diplomats will be excluded from this treatment.

The move seems counterintuitive for an administration that launched a tourism campaign in 2002 with the stated aim of enticing "10 million foreign tourists to visit Japan by the year 2010." It makes sense, however, in the wider context of biometric identifiers as a system for tracking and controlling citizens which is popping up in country after country after country. Japan is no different, having already implemented palm verification technology at bank ATMs across the country.

Of course, the argument is that treating citizens as potential criminals keeps the world safer, especially from the evils of international terrorism in the post-9/11 world. The process of turning borders into prisons began in earnest in 2004 when the United States began requiring citizens of 27 industrialized nations to subject themselves to a process of fingerprinting and mugshot photography generally reserved for thiefs, murderers and sex offenders. As expected, the US Department of Homeland Security claimed the process would help protect the country from terrorists, citing the examples of Zacharias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker of 9/11 who traveled into the US on a French passport, and some of the Madrid bombers, who had valid Spanish passports. Of course, Homeland Security neglected to mention that Zacharias Moussaoui was a deranged patsy and the Madrid bombers were police informants who were reporting to Spain's Civil Guard bomb squad. It seems fingerprinting and photographing might not have done any good in preventing these terrorist attacks from happening after all. Rubbing salt in the wound is the fact that the Homeland Security spokesman who announced the need for the new border security program was Asa Hutchinson, who earned his position as Undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security by helping coverup the CIA op to ship cocaine into Mena, Arkansas in the 1980s, a long-suppressed tidbit from the Iran-Contra scandal that the mainstream media has conveniently forgotten about.

Those who would still passively support this type of degrading treatment by simply agreeing to it are advised to think about the consequences of accepting the premise that all civilians are potential criminals and should be treated as such. As The Corbett Report has previously reported, there is a police state control grid being erected around us as we speak and passive acceptance of it will not lead to a happier future.

Thankfully, there are signs of resistance to this creeping fascism, but many still seem to be in denial about the ramifications of trusting a government to track and control their citizens and tourists. Those looking to make a stand against this type of tyranny might be relieved to know that there is an historical precedent for successfully throwing off the shackles of an oppressive police state: