As many VC readers may know, the Brazilian government has started fingerprinting American visitors, as a kind of retaliation for how we now treat Brazilian visitors. My friend and colleague David Levy just flew to Brazil, and he offers the following account of the process:
“The Brazilian authorities are indeed engaged in “tit-for-tat” for US border policies. It is hysterically funny.
The US policy is to digitize fingerprints to match visitors against various watch lists. The digital photos are presumably recordered to allow the various agents to do a rapid identification in the field if the fingerprint match turms up a “person of interest.” One staggers at the computational resources thrown into this effort.
At the Brazilian point of entry, the American passport holders got a special line. Since there aren’t many, this shortened the queue. Thank you! The digital photo was taken by a young lady with what looks like a $99.95 camera. The identification tag is a piece of paper with my name neatly printed — by me — held across my chest. Then my right thumb print is inked unto the paper and the paper is put in a pile. That will work.
I’m willing to bet that the requirement for a separate line to deal with American passport holders reduced the cost to Americans of visiting Brazil. The probability of the authorities being able to use the “information” collection floats around zero. Some benefit; no cost.”
Click on the above link, and read David’s renowned account of how economics acquired the name “dismal science.”
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