What's unclear to me here is this: under this new scheme does the USA get access to the biometric data of people not travelling to the USA?

This all reminds me about how RealID was vital to secure us from terrorism, and it took 20 years to get it in place... with no significant terrorist actions in that timeframe.

IMHO this level of tracking ain't worth the safety gained. Seems like safety gain is just the excuse at this point.

> Whereas in the US you only need to go through fingerprinting only once

Once for each arrival.

Also worth nothing that if you’ve verified your ID on LinkedIn or anything that uses Persona or some other flavour of Palantir - the US already has all this data and much more.

I hate all this biometric scanning on all sides. As an American it makes me not want to visit the EU to avoid being scanned, and I'd understand the other way too if an EU member was visiting the us.

In the US there have been notorious mistakes of using biometrics to falsely recognize an unknown criminal. Does this happen in the EU too?

It's probably too late but we should try to get rid of this.

>EU also collects photo and fingerprints from visitors now on every arrival and departure.

This world is very depressing. I think this may be my last year on the planet.

No, if you don’t change your passport you only have to scan your fingerprints once in the EU.

So let the people who want to go to the US do that and don't send data from the vast majority of people who will never visit the US there. It's claimed that only data of traveler's will be retrieved by the US but it's not 2012 anymore, we all know better.

Both the USA and the EU are doing Evil here. However had, this is not solely confind to biometric data only - this is about selling data to outside agencies, so the EU betrays EU citizens here.

You don’t get fingerprints collected on departure, just on arrival. Unless you go through automated gates maybe?

If the US gets the data anyway, why the need for access?

> in the EU you need to go through it both on every arrival and every departure.

You absolutely don't. If you've done it once on your passport/ID you don't need to do it again. And infact there are fast track autonomous lanes that you can just scan your EU passport with biometric chip and fly through. (In theory, there's always idiots who don't realise they don't have it)

> in the US you only need to go through fingerprinting only once (or maybe "once per passport")

I’ve entered the US something like 150 times over 20 years. Visa free (ESTA) and on a B1 tourist visa.

I’ve been fingerprinted and photographed every single time.

> visa (a major hassle) and biometric data passing in the airport (a minor one).

Since US-issued visas are multiple entry for 10yrs, it's relatively not a hassle at all.

With the major distinction being that a lot of Europeans have absolutely no intention of ever visiting the United States, a country with a history of sometimes more, sometimes less hostility and aggressive intelligence agencies.

If you want to visit a hellhole, go through the hassle. But don't hand out all of our data just because you want to do joyrides.

>As a side note, the EU also collects photo and fingerprints from visitors now.

Does this also apply if you arrive by dinghy?

Flew into CDG two days ago. US citizens. Passport control did not take fingerprints from any of us.

> one needs to give the US Govt their photo and fingerprints ("biometric data") anyway.

Standard practice everywhere in Asia.

I’m just annoyed at all the visa-free claims while they charge you and you need a pre-approval anyway.

[dead]

You missed the third option: don't go to the US.

There's a third option - Not going to the US. It is my preferred option.

Does the EU really collect that, or only sometimes? I know the EU reserves the right to collect all that, but do they in practice?

I haven't been to the EU in a decade, but last time I was there I was standing in the customs line for non-EU residents and someone official saw my US passport in hand and directed me to the much shorter/faster EU citizens line. I walked right through customs without being checked at all.