Thousands of prospective law students take something called the LSAT every year. The LSAT - or law school aptitude test - gauges, or purports to gauge, the intellectual abilities thought essential to academic success in law school. In order to take this test, a thumb print must be submitted to LSAC - and it is this thumbprint that is a the center of controversy: some fear that the U.S. would easily be able to force LSAC to forfeit these thumbprints, along with other personal information, under the wide powers granted under the Patriot Act. For example, test takers in B.C. and Alberta have complained that the U.S. Government could easily confiscate their sensitive personal information and use it in any number of ways that offend privacy values.
To be sure, there are some reasons to worry about the procedural aspects of the information gathering process under the Patriot Act. If the U.S. did cull private data from LSAC - including thumbprints and other personal information - LSAC would be prohibited from disclosing to its customers (test takers) that this information was handed over surreptitiously. In other words, the requests are secret and the fact that requests have been granted is also prohibited from being disclosed.
But on the other hand, there are a number of possible ways in which this information could be used sensibly by the federal government. One possibility is that collected data could be subject to an expungement requirement: similar to the LSAC's current policy of only archiving thumbprints for 5 years, the U.S. could get rid of thumbprints and other information after a predetermined period of time. Alternatively, information could be discarded immediately after it was deemed irrelevant to current or future investigations of terrorist activity.
The people who loathe the notion that their private information might be turned over to the U.S. Government aren't convinced by these "what ifs." Who are these people? Potentially, all LSAT test-takers from Canada, Asia, Europe and Africa. These people would really rather not lose control of their thumbprints in the first place, rather than invest faith in a surveillance regime administered by a foreign country.