A group representing several major airlines alongside travel companies and airports is opposing a Senate bill that would require the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to generally use manual ID verification at security checkpoints instead of facial recognition.
The bill, introduced by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), would broadly restrict TSA’s ability to use biometrics and facial recognition, carving out a few exemptions for the agency’s PreCheck and other Trusted Traveler programs. Passengers may still opt in to the use of facial recognition at the checkpoint.
In a letter Monday to Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the air industry groups said the law was a “step backward” and that facial recognition technology made security screenings far more efficient.
I was traveling internationally recently and returning to the USA I didn’t even need my passport to clear through immigration. They had a camera which recognized me and gave me the green light to pass as I approached.
The agent had a few questions and I was on my way.
It was convenient as hell, but the fact that their system can link me to whatever data is stored with my passport records based on a second or two of recognition out of all the faces that must be in there…
actually kinda blows.
It means they can definitely put a street camera system in place and see oh, there’s /u/nucleative. Wonder why he’s at the protest, bank, with that person, driving that car, near a crime scene, or anything else.
Somehow we have zero privacy yet the enforcement hides behind numbers and masks.
I expect that this will just continue to go further and further.
Kids, this is why we needed to push back hard on privacy, random cameras, and facial recognition 20 years ago.
The metaphorical horse is already out of the barn and removing or disabling these systems will probably never happen now.
This would be infuriating no matter what, but the hypocrisy of ICE wearing masks and all the bullshit about accountability for everybody “except me and my frenz bcuz we’re too busy making America so great to worry about the rules” makes this all so much more fucking ridiculous
Unless lots of people begin dismantling them. but that may turn out to be not too healthy.
Part of the reason it’s so fast is they have the passenger manifest already. So they start the search checking against the hundreds of people that just arrived. Instead off the much larger overall database.