Regarding the Nov. 27 Views From the Street question, "Does fingerprinting foreign arrivals help Japan in its 'war on terror'?": One respondent says, "I don't think it really helps fight terrorism." This is quite correct. Extremist organizations often, if not usually, employ young people without criminal or police records to carry out acts of terror, so that it is unlikely that they would be caught by biometric screening.
For example, Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991 by a young Tamil Hindu woman with bombs strapped to her body. There is doubtlessly a large supply of such young people, not only in unstable South Asian and Middle Eastern countries but also in Western Europe and perhaps North America, as the bombing incidents in Madrid and London demonstrated.
The use of suicide bombers would also make it unlikely that the Japanese government could even confirm whether the perpetrators were foreign or in the biometric data base, unless DNA samples were available (and the new screening system doesn't test for DNA).
For Japanese people like those interviewed in Views From the Street who are worried about terrorism, more effective countermeasures would include tighter security cordons in sensitive areas (such as around the Diet Building and Foreign Ministry), "hardening" public areas (for example, is the Mori Building in Roppongi protected by concrete barriers?) and (although this raises serious civil liberties concerns) greater use of surveillance cameras.
One of the Japanese interviewees says, "It's a fact that foreign crime is increasing." If the perceived rise in foreign crime is the real reason for the screening, the Japanese government ought to say so and not hide behind the fig leaf of the "war on terror."
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