In a move that has civil rights advocates up in arms, the Bush administration announced that all terrorists will be required to submit to fingerprinting before they are permitted to board aircraft and crash them into buildings.
An anonymous official said that the Justice Department would expand an already existing law to make every last minute of a terrorist's life "a hellish nightmare of red tape."
The new requirements will entail that all terrorists receive official US Government authorization before being permitted to enter the United States to kill innocent men, women and children. Attorney General John Ashcroft said of the new procedures, "Terrorists will think twice before committing shoddy, hastily-prepared acts of terrorism."
In addition to being fingerprinted, terrorists will also be required to spend an afternoon at a photo studio. However, a spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union said the organization has already filed suit against the Justice Department, demanding that the word "cheese" be translated into Arabic.
The new federal rules are expected to improve efforts to identify the perpetrators of terrorism, especially in cases in which all available witnesses have been crushed, mutilated, burned, or otherwise annihilated.
Critics of the Bush administration plan are skeptical of the benefits of fingerprinting, due to the relatively fragile nature of aircraft fuselage. However, a Justice Department spokesman said that work is already underway to develop a new high-tech polymer which will enable airplane fuselage to be dusted for fingerprints, even after an airplane has disintegrated.
