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January 11, 2005 12:12 AM
Broken: US Visit kiosks
Joi Ito reports: US closed for the day.
Thanks to Paul Saffo for the photograph.
I have no idea why anyone *would*, but it *does* look Photoshopped. The lighting on the "Not In Service" signs - whether they're graphics displayed on the screen or pieces of paper taped over the screens - doesn't look quite right.
Yup photoshopped.
It's too clear.
Someone probably did it to accompany an article, or a point they were trying to make.
Too bad - if it was legit I woulda posted it in my blog - http://onclick.blogs.com
It has some relevance.
Not Photoshopped, not broken. US VISIT was a pre-9/11 program where regular travellers in and out of the US who were not US citizens or green card holders could jump the long line at immigration. If you had a certain type of US visa, and you registered your palm print with the INS, you could walk straight up to one of these machines, put in your palm and your visa, and get let through automatically. The machines were "temporarily" taken out of service not long after 9/11, but they still seem to hang out in immigration halls with these signs on them, maybe in the hope that they will get put back into service.
US VISIT has now been reborn, over the past year, as a program where nearly all visitors to the US need to have their fingerprints and photo taken at immigration.
I think it’s a fake. If this machines exists before 9/11 then how comes there are seals of the US Department of Homeland Security are on the front? The US DHS was formed in 2002. Photoshopped……
You can tell it's not photoshopped just by taking a close look at the image, or if it were, somebody went to a lot of trouble. The sign on the left is a slightly darker blue, neither is completely solid color, and the right one has slightly thicker letters than the right (and I believe they are angled differently). The same effect can be seen on the "US Visit" signs and the seal, though the exact same colors do not appear in either. (so nothing to eyedropper from) JPEG compression artifacts are uniform as well.
If this were a photoshop, it was a LOT of work for nothing. And a very clean source photo.
That the Dept. Homeland Security was formed after the machines were in use is not compelling eveidence for fakery. They may have been added after the formation of the dept., even though the machines are no longer in use. In fact, it would be a typical act of the most definitely broken US bureaucracy.
Photoshopped? Maybe that photo is, but I saw these terminals in person at the Phoenix, Arizone airport only two weeks ago. And they had the Department of Homeland Security logo on them. And they were all shut down, like the photo shows... I thought it was interesting, but I wouldn't call it "broken." Just, "they're not finished with the system yet."
Does it really matter if it's photoshopped or not? I'm sure that if it has been digitally enhanced, then whoever did it must be incredibily giddy to think of all the people that are on messageboards squabbling about whether it is authentic or not. For the record, I, too think that it has been photoshopped.
On further inspection, I'm actually going to have to weigh in against them being Photoshopped (which, yes, is a change from what I wrote above). I'd thought those were standard video touchscreens, and they're not (http://wendy.seltzer.org/photos/stockbridge/us_visit.jpg - large image!); given the different type of display mechanism, I'm not surprised by the lighting on the screens looking "weird" (as well as the lack of the distortion around the edges of the screens that you'd expect from a standard video screen).
That, or the fact that I saw these exact machines less than 2 weeks ago at the Phoenix airport. Criminy.
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Previous: Blockbuster tagline | Main | Next: Government cookie recipe
That reminds me of the 80's when banks would shut down their ATMs for bank holidays and such...
Posted by: Grey Hodge at January 11, 2005 02:01 AM