Fingerprint scans at US stations

[wembley8]

I used a left luggage locker at a US railways station (Chicago) last week, and found that as well as giving you a PIN number to retrieve your luggage, it also does a fingerprint scan, supposedly as a security measure.

Who's security? Is this so that if someone tries to blow the station up they will at least have fingerprints? or is it some other nefarious purpose? Or is it really quite harmless and the fingerprint records are actually deleted the next time the locker is used?

 

[Anonymous]

I think it rather unlikely that they would throw away such useful information. The prints are probably stored so they can catch out criminals that hide loot (should they be stupid enough to do so) or at the very least they can keep track of who uses what and how often.

 

[Zilch5]

As seen on "Mthbusters", fingerprint scanners can be easily fooled. So they are pretty worthless as a security tool.

Not that this fact would stop a government agency from using them...