DHS expands security program at borders

Here's some good news:

One year after launching a digital screening system to help identify suspicious foreign visitors arriving in the United States by air and sea, federal officials announced yesterday that they have extended the program to the 50 busiest U.S. land ports along the Canadian and Mexican borders. The program uses digital scanners to examine prints taken from the two index fingers, as well as head-shot photographs taken with digital cameras. Those "biometric" identifiers can then be matched against several databases, verifying the identity of visitors and checking various federal and state watch lists.

There's something that bothers me, though. To wit:

Still, a senior Homeland Security official declared the first phase of the program a success. US-VISIT, short for U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology, has become "the gold standard for security and convenience," said Asa Hutchinson, the department's undersecretary for border and transportation security. Hutchinson said the screening process had cut paperwork and border-crossing times for many foreigners. He cited data showing that the average wait for certain classes of visitors had dropped to 2 minutes, 33 seconds in Laredo, Texas. Previously, the average wait had been 12 minutes, 10 seconds.

As a law-abiding U.S. citizen who doesn't want to get blown up, I don't care at all about how "convenient" it is for foreigners to enter my country. Security should be Priorities #1 through 10 for the Department of Homeland Security. If convenience is a side effect, that's fine. If it's not, that's okay too.