The lawyer in Oregon that was arrested by the FBI because they “identified” his fingerprints on materials related to the bombing of the train station in Spain is going to be getting $2M from the U.S. taxpayers:

Two years ago the FBI branded Oregon attorney Brandon Mayfield a terror suspect, secretly searched his house and eavesdropped on his conversations with his family and co-workers.

On Wednesday, Justice Department officials agreed to pay Mayfield $2 million to settle one part of his lawsuit for his wrongful arrest in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people.

Mayfield, a former Army officer, also got a formal apology. And the settlement allows him to continue his legal challenge to the USA Patriot Act, which Mayfield charges violates the Fourth Amendment by permitting government searches without demonstrating probable cause that a crime has been committed.

“The United States acknowledges that the investigation and arrest were deeply upsetting to Mr. Mayfield, to Mrs. Mayfield and to their three young children,” said Tasia Scolinos, a Justice Department spokeswoman, in a prepared statement. “And the United States regrets that it mistakenly linked Mr. Mayfield to this terrorist attack.”

Mayfield believed he was singled out because of his Muslim faith. FBI agents, however, insisted that his arrest was based on a faulty fingerprint identification that linked him to the attack.

Either way, Mayfield’s arrest is one of the FBI’s most embarrassing episodes in its five-year campaign to detect terrorist cells inside the United States.

The case also cast doubt on the accuracy of the FBI’s troubled fingerprint-identification program and raised questions about sweeping anti-terror measures passed by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Mayfield, 40, was detained for two weeks after agents matched the print of his left index finger with one found on a bag of detonators connected to the Madrid attack.

What most people don’t know is that fingerprint identification is often as much an art as a science. Sure if you have excellent quality prints from the nice man carefully rolling your inked finger back and forth on the fingerprint card even a computer can match that to another fingerprint card carefully made some other time. But if they have a smeared fingerprint left from you gripping a textured hand railing, or just the tips of your fingers from typing on the keyboard, or if you soaked your fingers in bleach the night before it’s not clear whether you can get a match at all. And if you are elderly and do a lot of hand labor then the nice man may not even have usable fingerprints from your carefully inked and rolled fingers on the card.

But the U.S. legal system has a tremendous amount of case law built up that says a fingerprint match is positive identification. The problem is there aren’t good standards for what constitutes a “match”. How many little arches and swirls much be in agreement before it’s considered good enough that no one else could have left those fingerprints at the crime scene? Or how may discrepancies can exist before the defense can argue that it definitely wasn’t the suspect that left them? The courts have left it up to “experts” to decide. And the experts don’t agree. The “science” of fingerprints isn’t science. You can get two “experts” to look at identical data and reach opposite conclusions. And what of the ability to spoof fingerprints? It’s not that difficult. And you leave some pretty high quality fingerprints on those soda cans you recycle, the water glass at the restaurant, and restroom door at work.

Until the case above the FBI experts had a much lower threshold for an “identical match” than did the forensic experts in other countries. And I don’t think this issue has been settled yet. I expect there will be other cases where the “experts” want to “help” or have pressure put on them to claim matches when there shouldn’t be. Innocent people will be arrested, imprisoned, and perhaps sometimes even executed because of shaky fingerprint evidence.

A good part of the problem is that many people think of science as some sort of magic that can give black and white solutions to almost anything. In some cases it can but in others it’s simply not possible. But that’s beyond the scope of this post. So I’ll save that for later.

Nuclear fusion is a wonderful idea. Clean, no risk of people making bombs from it, and nearly limitless energy. And we have people working on it. The problem is it’s not just some government program–which would almost for certain doom it. There are numerous governments working on it. Think of a committee of bureaucrats that don’t speak the same language. Now give them billions of dollars and tell them they aren’t expected to deliver a working prototype for years or even decades. Oh, and they aren’t ever expected to turn a profit.

When General Electric, Chevron, or even Toyota tells me they are building a nuclear fusion plant I’ll willingly buy their stock. But the government is going to have to get my money for this boondoggle they way they always do–at the point of a gun.

So… just how good do you think those security checks at the TSA checkpoints are? How poor of a job would they have to do before you would say, “We need to figure something else out. This just isn’t working.”? Suppose they let 10% of the knives and explosives through. Or may be 25%. Surely if 50% of the people could get guns and explosive through you would say they should be fired, right? Well… the real numbers are:

Federal authorities have launched an investigation to determine who leaked test results showing security screeners missed 90 percent of the explosives and guns agents attempted to sneak past checkpoints this month at Newark Liberty International Airport.

The probe was launched by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration after The Star-Ledger, citing information from federal security officials, reported Thursday that screeners failed 20 of 22 covert tests and also violated standard operating procedures at the busy hub.

Don’t you just love it? The government agency gets caught not doing the job they said private enterprise was too incompetent to handle what is their response? Why it’s, “You weren’t supposed to know that! Who told you?” They are going prosecute whoever it was that let us know they are playing Keystone Cops to the extent they succeed only 10% of the time. Just like Christopher Soghoian said, it’s “security theater”.

It’s time to consider alternatives to airplane security.

This article from the U.K. sounds absolutely glowing about implants to give you a unique I.D. so you can “Speed through the checkout with just a wave of your arm”. But when you actually look at the number of people actually willing do submit to such a thing things look a little different:

The idea is already catching on with today’s iPod generation. According to research released today by the Institute for Grocery Distribution (IGD), a retail think-tank, almost one in ten teenagers and one in twenty adults are willing to have a microchip implanted to pay shop bills and help to prevent card or identity fraud and muggings.

In other words, only 10% of teenagers and only 5% of adults would be willing to have a microchip implanted in their bodies. That’s too many but it’s low enough that it’s not likely to be mandated by the government any time soon.

I wonder how many milliseconds of thought were put into the claim that such a thing would help prevent muggings. Plan on having a hunk of your arm cut out when you get mugged for your money. And they will have access to your entire bank account instead of just the cash in your wallet. If your credit card is stolen there are relatively small limits on the amount you are liable for so that isn’t a very big deal.

And these concerns completely ignore the little issue of the ID being remotely read and tied to things like your religion, race, national origin, or sexual preference (I see you are a Jew and it looks like there is a homosexual hiding behind the bookcase). ID implants fail my Jews In The Attic Test.

As I have said before, I’ll accept an ID implant when the people giving the implants accept my implants for themselves. My implants are a little larger than theirs. Mine weigh about 200 grains and will be moving at least Mach 2.0 (assuming I’m within 500 yards which isn’t really a requirement) when they contact the skin.