Sophia University professor David McNeill on fingerprinting and more

"(...) just to pick the topic of the day, the whole fingerprinting issue, do you have any thoughts about this as a non-Japanese living in Japan?

DM: Well, the most sensible thing I've heard ― obviously I'm against it ― but the most sensible thing I've heard anybody say about it was a guy called William Wetherall, who writes a lot of letters to the Japan Times.

And he said that people are looking at it in the wrong way. It's not that it's discriminating against foreigners. Which it is, in the sense that it's only foreigners that they check ― which is a really bad idea, if they check people who've been here, like me, a long time, permanent residents who pay taxes, it is insulting ― but he said no, these kinds of things are always used first on the weakest part of the population, and then they are expanded.

So it's aimed at Japanese people, not at foreigners, and that's why you have to fight these things. They tend to be used initially against a group [about whom] everybody says: "oh, we have to protect ourselves from them". If you ask an average Japanese person who hasn't thought about this issue much in Japan, they'll say, oh yeah, we could fingerprint foreigners. Why not? It's only 5 minutes at the airport. And if they don't have anything to hide, then what's the problem? And anyway, there are some foreigners who are criminals, you know. People say that, right?

But those kinds of things tend to be used in that way and then expanded and used against everybody. And that's why I think Japanese people should be against this.

9-11 is used to legitimize so many bad things. Censorship and surveillance. And suspicion. It's just a very disturbing trend, and nobody knows where it's going to end."

Read the whole interview of David McNeill, professor at Sophia University in Tokyo, posted over at Gyaku. Although the fingerprinting issue comes last, the whole interview is extremely interesting.