www.iht.com Starting Sept. 30, foreign travelers from 27 countries, including most of those in the European Union, will be fingerprinted and photographed upon entry at American airports and seaports under a program to pinpoint who exactly is inside the United States at any given time.

This is a departure from prior practice, where citizens from nearly two dozen European countries, including France and England, as well as those from Australia, Brunei, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore, traveled to the United States using a passport but not a visa. Those traveling under the Visa Waiver Program will now have to undergo the new electronic screening, including inkless fingerprint scanning and digital photographs, to be able to cross the U.S. border. This amounts to about 13 million people a year, most of whom either are from Britain or come via one of the London airports. The additional measures have been imposed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as part of its continuing efforts to thwart terrorists from entering the United States. The program is called US-Visit, and is part of anti-terrorist legislation that followed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The first portion of the program was put in place in January when foreign travelers with visas were required to submit to fingerprinting and photographing when they arrived at any of America's 115 major airports and 14 major sea ports.

The prints and photographs are checked against information in databases to verify the authenticity of the passport and to match any names with those on terrorist or criminal watch rosters.

"It's clean, it's quick, it's simple and without questions," said Asa Hutchinson, under secretary for Border and Transportation Security. "It is enhancing the integrity of our immigration systems while protecting individual privacy."

The U.S. government has had to work out the measures with the European Union, which has expressed reservations over whether storing such biometric identifiers violated European privacy rules and caused unnecessary travel disruption.

Some of the differing trans-Atlantic views over security came to light recently when flights from London to the United States were canceled amid tangles over whether armed air marshals were required on certain planes.

Also, the European Union has expressed concern about a U.S. requirement for biometric or machine-readable passports, and asked for a two-year extension on the requirement. It got a one-year extension from Congress, until Oct. 26, 2005.

"We're not expecting this to cause huge disruptions," Anthony Gooch, a European Union spokesman, said of the fingerprinting and photographs. He also said that how smoothly the program runs depends on how various countries regard the requirements. Of the EU's 25 member countries, nine are not members of the Visa Waiver Program, which allows entry for 90 days into the United States for business or pleasure using only a passport.

Earlier this year, the United States and Brazil got into a tiff over the security measures. Brazil decided to impose its own security measures shortly after the United States imposed its requirements in January.

In February, Brazil began requiring American visitors to be photographed and fingerprinted before they entered the country for the first time.

So far, said Brian Doyle, a U.S. Homeland Security spokesman, more than 8.5 million foreign nationals have been processed since January without serious delays. Of those, 285 people have been intercepted who have prior or suspected criminal or immigration violations, including convicted rapists and drug traffickers as well as immigration violators and those attempting visa fraud.

The U.S. government is putting into place other requirements to secure its borders. Recently, the EU and the United States agreed to share information about trans-Atlantic airline travelers, requiring each passenger's name, address and credit card information immediately before departure.

The following 27 countries are part of the Visa Waiver Program: Andorra, Austria, Australia, Belgium, Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.