So I am being fingerprinted, but I haven't been arrested.  So what am I.  Well I am just a British airport passenger. In seems the home of tolerance and civil liberties has just lost the plot.  Read this excellent post from Kerala news.

 Millions of British airline passengers will face mandatory fingerprinting before being allowed to board flights when Heathrow's Terminal 5 opens later this month. For the first time at any airport, the biometric checks will apply to all domestic passengers leaving the terminal, which will handle all British Airways flights to and from Heathrow. The controversial security measure is also set to be introduced at Gatwick, Manchester and Heathrow's Terminal 1, and many airline industry insiders believe fingerprinting could become universal at all UK airports within a few years.

All four million domestic passengers who will pass through Terminal 5 annually after it opens on March 27 will have four fingerprints taken, as well as being photographed, when they check in.

To ensure the passenger boarding the aircraft is the same person, the fingerprinting process will be repeated just before they board the aircraft and the photograph will be compared with their face.

BAA, the company that owns Heathrow, insists the biometric information will be destroyed after 24 hours and will not be passed on to the police.

The company said the move had been necessitated by the design of Terminal 5, where international and domestic passengers share the same lounges and public areas after they have checked in.

Without the biometric checks, the company says, potential criminals and illegal immigrants arriving on international flights or in transit to another country could bypass border controls by swapping boarding passes with a domestic passenger who has already checked in.

They could then board the domestic flight, where proof of identity is not currently required, fly on to another UK airport and leave without having to go through passport control.

Most other airports avoid the problem by keeping international and domestic passengers separate at all times, but the mixed lounges exist at Gatwick, Manchester and Heathrow's Terminal 1.

Gatwick and Manchester currently deal with the problem by photographing all passengers as they pass through security, and checking the picture against their face at the departure gate.

Civil liberties campaigners have raised concerns about the possibility of security agencies trying to access the treasure trove of personal data in the future, adding that fingerprinting "will make innocent people feel like criminals".

Although fingerprinting is carried out at some foreign airports - most notably in the US - as part of immigration checks for international arrivals, Heathrow will be the first to fingerprint domestic passengers before they board their flights.

For those of you interested in Airport security technology the rather paranoid sounding 'National Terror Alert Response Centre' site carried this interesting article.

Amazing to think that something so simple, inexpensive and effective has been overlooked for this long. The newest tool at airport security checkpoints is 3 inches long and costs only a few dollars: a handheld black light. Airport screeners are starting to use them this month to examine driver’s licenses and other passenger ID cards presented at checkpoints to spot forgeries or tampering. Passengers with suspicious documents can be questioned by police or immigration agents.

Black lights will help screeners inspect the ID cards by illuminating holograms, typically of government seals, that are found in licenses and passports. Screeners also are getting magnifying glasses that highlight tiny inscriptions found in borders of passports and other IDs. About 2,100 of each are going to the nation’s 800 airport checkpoints.

The closer scrutiny of passenger IDs is the latest Transportation Security Administration effort to check passengers more thoroughly than simply having them walk through metal detectors. 
In the past six months, the agency has been taking over the checking of passenger IDs and boarding passes at airport checkpoints. For years, security guards hired by airlines have done that.

“This is a significant security upgrade,” TSA chief Kip Hawley says. Screeners are trained in spotting forged documents and will get some training in studying suspicious passenger behavior to pick out people who merit deeper scrutiny at the checkpoint, Hawley says.

The TSA screeners, unlike security guards, also get daily briefings on the latest airport security concerns.

More than 40 passengers have been arrested since June in cases when TSA screeners spotted altered passports, fraudulent visas and resident ID cards, and forged driver’s licenses.

The British Airports Authority (BAA) claimed this week that 95 per cent of passengers would take less than five minutes to pass through security next year, thanks to improvements at its seven airports. It also promised that only one per cent of travellers would fail to pass through within 15 minutes.
The Telegraph reports ...

Passengers have been subjected to unprecedented delays this year, as security staff have struggled to cope with rising numbers of travellers, antiquated machinery, confusing rules over liquids allowed on flights and strict hand-luggage limits. Mike Forster, strategy director for BAA, has acknowledged that security delays at Heathrow and Gatwick have been unacceptable. Speaking at the World Travel Market in London, he said that a combination of extra investment and staffing, new technology and the opening of Terminal 5 would enable BAA to meet the new targets.

Expectations have been raised further by the announcement from the Transport Secretary, Ruth Kelly, that air travellers will be allowed to bring more than one item of baggage on board from January 7 - though it's thought some airports will not be ready to implement the new rule until the spring. Many delays at security are caused by confusions over bag limits.

Britain remains the only country to operate a one-bag rule for air passengers, which was introduced last August amid a series of terrorism scares. However, the EU-wide rule restricting containers of liquids and gels to 100ml will remain in force.

BAA has hired 2,000 extra security staff since last year, and 680 of them will be based at Heathrow, where 11 new security lanes have been opened and new scanners and arches are being installed.

"Unlike the current systems, the new technology, which is called ATIX, can automatically detect explosives and liquids and it offers the security staff multiple viewing angles, so the margin for error or unnecessary hold-ups is even smaller," Mr Forster said.

"We also have a central control centre, which now gets updates on waiting times every 15 minutes, so we are able to put in extra staff or open new lanes to speed things up." Mr Forster said that many of the delays at check-in, immigration and baggage reclaim were beyond BAA's control. "Check-in is run by the airlines and passport control by the immigration service," he said. However, British Airways' chief executive Willie Walsh, writing exclusively for Telegraph Travel last week, blamed the management of Heathrow for much of the airline's problems over lost bags and punctuality.

"Of the 20 incidents between July and September, eight took place at Heathrow - far more than at any other airport," he said. "These included a security alert that closed Terminal 4 for most of a day, three breakdowns of the baggage systems, a runway closure, torrential rain, flooded baggage areas and an electrical failure." BAA claims that the fact that 95per cent of passengers last month passed through security within 10 minutes was evidence that the new targets could be hit. In October, however, Heathrow alone was processing two million fewer passengers than in July.

The fundamental problem with the airports is lack of capacity, according to Mr Forster, who said: "Heathrow was built for 45 million passengers a year and it handles 67 million. Gatwick is the busiest single-runway airport in the world. We need more capacity." He said the opening of Terminal 5 at the end of March would immediately free space in Terminal 1 and also in Terminal 4.

The latter will become the base for the SkyTeam alliance (including Air France, KLM and Delta) and will have its check-in area doubled. Terminal 3 will become the hub of the OneWorld alliance (which includes JAL, Qantas and American) and will have a £1billion refit in the next 10 years.

Terminal 2 will be knocked down and a new terminal, Heathrow East, developed for the Star Alliance (which includes Bmi, Singapore and United).

I have reprinted this blog from Newsvine because I think it makes some very valid points about discrimination between First Class customers and Standard Class especially in the context of security and race.  Many thanks to Newsvine and CrazyDrumGuy.

A s usual I arrived early for my flight out to go through the ritual of undressing my feet, shuffling my laptop and emptying my pockets. Even though my flight was sheduled [sic] to leave at 7:30 AM, I thought it would be prudent to arrive at the airport at 4:30 to leave enough time for this process. It turned out to be a good guess. The line stretched for some 400′ as it routed back on itself twice. There were two screeners checking IDs at the end of the line to disperse us into the security check equipment. After nearly 2 hours in this line, we came to the TSA screener who was looking at IDs and boarding passes. Each screener was working two lines. As we got closer to the screener, I noticed a curious thing about her station. She was sharing time between two lines, but the other line (the line I was not in) was for first class passengers. I looked back at my line to ensure it did not shrink - nope, some 400 people lined up behind me. The first class line had about 10. And worse, the screener would actually process more first class passengers at a time. That is, she would spend time issuing through three or four first class for each coach passenger. This means the line is not only shorter, but if you are in the longer line, you are treated as though there are four other lines shared with your screener. So, we asked, in the most polite way, how is it that we ended up waiting. Her response - “guess you got in the wrong line”…

I’ve seen this happening at airports I fly through, but when I read about grettadog’s experience I had an epiphany: why hasn’t this ever bothered me before? It is completely incomprehensible that, in a country whose leaders are obsessed with keeping the public in constant fear of a terrorist attack, certain people are given preferential treatment in the security screening that is intended to protect us from “the next attack” solely on the basis of their wealth. We are told that standing in line at airport security is a sacrifice we have to make for our protection, so how come some people don’t have to make that sacrifice? Sure, they have the money to pay, but don’t terrorists also have money? How else did they pay for their food, their lodgings, their flight lessons, their guns? How can the federal government justify preferential treatment while it’s telling us that everyone’s lives–rich and poor–are at stake?

Call me cynical, but there’s only possible justification I can think of. Creating one airport security for the rich and one airport security for the rest of us in the epitome of George W. Bush’s America. His agenda is, and always has been, to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. What better place to exemplify the increasing class divide than at the airport security line?

There’s already one group of Americans whose members are treated like third-class citizens at the airport–the evidence that the TSA engages in racial profiling is clear. So here’s a brain-buster for the TSA: what should they do if a man with dark skin or (gasp!) a turban ends up in the first-class line? Do they treat him like a first-class American passenger or a freedom-hating Islamofascist?