Regarding the Jan. 3 article "Deportee scams biometric screener, re-enters": The successful spoofing of the Japan-Visit program should not come as a surprise to any security specialist. Instructions on how to steal or forge fingerprints and fool the scanners have long been available on the Internet.
From the beginning it was clear that Japan-Visit is nothing more than security theater to make people feel safer and to catch those deported wrongdoers stupid enough to try to re-enter Japan without proper preparation. The bad guys soon adapt to new security measures and find ways to work around them, leaving law-abiding people with the burden of unpleasant treatment and uncertainty about what is happening with their biometric data.
Does this mean that Japan-Visit is not worth the money spent? Certainly not, but that is an entirely different story.