As readers doubtless recall, a Brazilian judge has mandated that all visitors to Brazil from the U.S. be fingerprinted and photographed, in retaliation for the U.S. imposing a similar requirement on visitors from Brazil and other countries. The judge also condemned the U.S. requirement as “absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis.”
Reader Rick Pura points to this page, which reports that, as of 1996,
In Brazil, for example, all residents are obliged to carry at all times a plasticated flexible card the size of a credit card bearing a photograph, thumb print, full name and parents’ names, national status (Brazilian national or alien resident) and a serial number.
Can any readers of this blog who are familiar with Brazil confirm or deny this?
UPDATE: Reader Marcelo Pecanha from Rio de Janeiro generally confirms the above, as do a couple of other readers, though with a qualifier:
I am a Brazilian national, and I feel compelled to offer give my two cents here.
First of all, anti-american sentiment in Brazil is now approaching mass hysteria, polls showing that we are actually worse than France in this area. Second, we have just elected our second left-leaning president in our democratic history. First time that happened, it lead to military coup (that was 1964) with full suppport from the USA.
This is the framework from which this fingerprinting decision emerged. I am not a lawyer, and I have no idea how a judge in Mato Grosso (which is the state thats hosts the Pantanal area, far from either Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo or our capital Brasilia) can have this kind of broad jurisdiction, but all you read about the comparisions with Nazi Germany are shamefully true. Newspapers here are simply loving it. The only one that is moving to change that is the one who has the most to lose: the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro. He is appealing the decision, and most likely will overrule that.
About the ID’s, I find that americans tend to exagerate a bit on this issue. We have a national ID system from as long as I can remember. I has all the data your reader points, including a right thumb fingerprint, but we are required to carry them only if we need a photo ID. . . .
Do we need to carry our ID’s all the time? On theory, no. But you have to understand that “probable cause” for Brazilian police is not the same as for american police. If they think they have cause to search you they, probably can without bothering with a posteriori law suits. And then, they can ask you for your ID and detain you if you don’t have it. Then again, nowhere else you have a police force so restrained. . . .
Me? I always have my ID in my wallet. . .
The reader also points out that this sort of ID requirement is no big deal, and that the Brazilians shouldn’t be faulted for it — and I agree. There are plausible arguments against it, but also plausible arguments for it. But I wasn’t the one who was condemning the Brazilians for fingerprinting and photographing Americans — it was the Brazilian judge who was condemning us for fingerprinting and photographing Brazilians. And now it turns out that this “absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis” action on the part of the Americans is apparently something that the judge’s own government require of its own citizens (as well as foreigners who reside in Brazil). The judge’s objections are in retrospect only getting weirder.
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