Legality of Storing Fingerprints?

[your_dreamguy]

I'm a privacy advocate. I do not have a problem with taking my fingerprints for a background check to get hired by my airline. However, after my fingerprints are run, what happens to them?
To find out, I called the NFCC (National Fingerprint Collection Center). I spoke with a representative. Apparantly, the NFCC collects your fingerprints for all (or most) airlines. From there, the NFCC forwards your fingerprints to the TSA. I do not know what happens to your fingerprints at the TSA. From there, your fingerprints go the FBI. The FBI does a background check. After that, the rep at the NFCC claims that your fingerprints are stored with the FBI for 90 days. However, even though I had no evidence, I had a feeling that the rep at the NFCC was lying to me. I think that the FBI, permantly stores your fingerprints. If that is the case, how is that legal? I cannot think of any law that would make the storing of personal information by a government agency legal? Isn't this a violation of your civil rights? Most pilots, say, you shouldn't have anything to hide. I do not have anything to hide. By the way, the "you should not have anything to hide" argument is routinely used by police to persuade people into giving up their rights in illegal searches carried out by the police. Further, when your fingerprints are stored, your fingerprints are accesible to government agencies of other countries. Also, what happens if there is some abusive people who mis-treat your personal data?

You might argue that I have consented for the storage of personal information by a government agency in other ways...such as getting a passport. However, what is interesting about a pilot's situation is that this is a governmental requirement for employment with a private company (that is not a govermental agency).

What was strange about my conversation with the rep at the NFCC was that he agreed with my viewpoint and added that many pilots had contacted him and expressed the same concerns. Are there enough pilots out there with the balls to get ALPA or some other organization to institute a change?

 

[avbug]

Spoken like true yuppie larvae scum.

Who put that gun to your head and forced you to submit your fingerprints, brightspark?

Do you believe in "black helicopters," and "chemtrails," too?

Further, when your fingerprints are stored, your fingerprints are accesible to government agencies of other countries.

Quite the little law enforcement expert, aren't you?

I cannot think of any law that would make the storing of personal information by a government agency legal?

Do you know of any law that makes it illegal? Were you born yesterday?

Are there enough pilots out there with the balls to get ALPA or some other organization to institute a change?

Do "balls" really make you that stupid?

 

[Mevans]

Courts have treated fingerprints similar to a photograph of your face, you do not have an expectation of privacy in your likenesss, especially since you voluntaritly gave it to someone. Agree or disagree if you like, that is just the current legal statuts.

And yes the FBI keeps your prints, just like DMV keeps your picture they took for your license.

 

[starchkr]

Want the job????

Suck it up and shut it up!!!

Who cares where your fingerprints go! Only those who have a dark past should care.

You might be a privacy advocate, but you might as well get used to not having your privacy. You never have had it, and you never will. That's the day and age we live in.

 

[Snoopy58]

No!

No! Fingerprints, or credit report, or love letters to your girlfriend... it's all exactly the same, and should all be kept equally private, equally protected, equally inaccessible to any government, any creditor, any (other) girlfriend, um, ah, where was I now?

Oh, yeah, storing fingerprints... well DUH the FBI keeps them... DUH!!! What was the question again?

 

[huncowboy]

I thought FBI is indeed destroying the fingerprints.

As far as I go, I would have everyone's freaking DNA taken at birth, then the fingerprint at the ideal age.... there would be much less crime. Yes... some could get the short end of it, but compared to how much easier it would make it for law enforcement, I would take the risk for the huge benefit this could provide. I think I have read something about New Zealand doing this already.

 

[FN FAL]

I'm a privacy advocate. I do not have a problem with taking my fingerprints for a background check to get hired by my airline. However, after my fingerprints are run, what happens to them?

I had to submit fingerprints in duplicate to the BATF, who In turn sent them over to FBI for a background check. That was for two machine guns and a suppressor (silencer for you t.v. watchers). What do you think they did with those finger prints? whoo hoo!...they know where I live now!...whoo hoo! For all I care they can wipe their ass with em.

 

[sqwkvfr]

This one's pretty simple.

Positions of responsibility require that you give up some of your privacy.

You wanna drive that cop car, run a nu-cu-lear reactor for the Department of Energy or fly that airliner? You have to prove that you're a responsible person, or, at the very least, not a felon.....and this is one of the ways.

When I worked in law enforcement, I tired very quickly of all of the reviews, reports, dashcams, etc (living in a fishbowl)......until I remembered that I needed to be thankfull that I had a position of such responsibility that society thought that it needed powerful oversight.

 

[your_dreamguy]

Still No Answer

It's great that you have those opinions. We are allowed to have different opinions. However, no one has yet show me how this is legal. Maybe LegalEagle can help.
For example, if I want to land at an airport while the weather is below minimums, I would look into the FARS and find legal references. These legal refernences would show me if landing at an airport below minimums is allowed or not.
No one has done this for my original post. Where are the legal references as to how the FBI can store your fingerprints in a database for doing a transportation job. I don't know of commercial truck drivers or train conductors having their finger prints stored. Interesting, there are more commercial truck operations than commercial flights in the US.

 

[avbug]

Are you asking if there is a national database for pilot's fingerprints?

There isn't.

You want to know about the legality of retaining a record of a security check for law enforcement purposes. Where do you find any law indicating it's not legal?