Michael Chertoff gave this interview on Britain’s Sky TV. In it he referred to the “radicalization” of “young people” by “charismatic” recruiters and the internet. Of course, Chertoff was careful not to mention where these “recruiters” might be found, or exactly what sort of “young people” he had in mind. Reminds us of the French use of “les jeunes.” Ah well, such is our world — but that’s not our main point.

There was a big scoop in the Sky News interview — at least to us — but the reporter didn’t pick up on it. It turns out that the US has been collecting fingerprints all over the world at any places that radical Islamists have been known to gather. Chertoff mentioned only safe houses and training camps, but it doesn’t take much imagination to extend that mission to apartments, houses, hotel rooms, restaurants, shops, mosques, cars, trucks, etc., where known terrorist suspects have met with others. The fingerprints of the “others” — often persons unknown to law enforcement authorities — are then aggregated into a huge database.

Indeed, Chertoff specifically mentioned that one fellow who was denied entry into the US at O’Hare airport in 2003 by this fingerprint database was subsequently identified as a suicide bomber several years later. Homeland Security found out because his fingerprints were ID’d on the steering wheel of the car he blew himself up in. (Who knew we were doing such analysis of suicide cars?)

The US is requiring that all ten fingerprints be supplied by visitors to the US, because it is matching latents found through its forensic examination of terrorist meeting spots. Good for us! (The next step is that we’ll be able to spot the bad guys because they’ll be the ones wearing latex gloves everywhere they go.)

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 7th, 2007 at 10:21 am and is filed under General, Religion, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.