The TSA likes facial recognition at airports. Passengers and politicians, not so much US lawmakers are trying to extend the use of facial recognition at airports, despite many airline passengers objecting to the practice. US airports have used facial scanners since 2017, when the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) started trials of the tech in the hope it would improve security and speed boarding …
Nah... But be happy to see that diversity is back in the US, and TSA is hiring blind people...
The TSA had no comment at time of publication. However, it claims that facial scans are only used to match a person's image against their ID, and that pictures aren't stored "except in a limited testing environment for evaluation of the effectiveness of the technology."
Using your eyes (and brain) is sooooo last century...
What do you gain from your refusal? There are cameras all over the airport, and your ID is checked and recorded so it isn't like you are getting any privacy in your travels whether you do the facial scan or the manual process.
I'm all for fighting the man and trying to prevent further erosion of my privacy, but opting out from this is pointless "privacy theater" in the same way the 20 years we spent taking off our shoes was security theater.
So I’m still unclear exactly why the photo is taken. The photo on my own non-US driving license is patchy at best, allowing a quick visual check but nothing more. Likewise passport, except that has biometric markers which are used for e-gates at airports. Ah, the penny drops. Does right pondland not have e-gates? Or biometric passports? Or indeed biometric driving licences?
The more pics of your face in identical poses, the more accurate the identification will be in the future of *you*.
Tell me why that's in my interest?
Of course the pics go elsewhere. When caught at it, what will be the repercussions? An un-auditable promise to delete?
If you don't opt out, you've cast one more vote for normalizing this particular style of security theater. One more vote for less scrutiny when those in charge extend its use to something abusive.
I'll ask you to consider that your convenience in the moment is less important than impeding the adoption of yet another panopticon.
"What do you gain from your refusal? There are cameras all over the airport, and your ID is checked and recorded so it isn't like you are getting any privacy in your travels whether you do the facial scan or the manual process."
Different systems with data being stored on different servers for different uses. A nice tight closeup is also more pixels than some CCTV 20' up on a wall that catches you passing through poor lighting. The image the TSA takes lets them store it on their systems as well has hire more visually impaired people that have already been fired from the fast food and retail industries, multiple times. If you want to use the photos to gather measurements and ratios, it's very handy to have good lighting and take the photos with a known camera/lens. That little dialog in Hunt for Red October about the agency wanting the camera the photos were taken with to be able to characterize the lens is a real thing. Cheap disposable cameras like those old Disc cameras didn't have tight controls over the lens manufacturing. With a high quality lens, it's good enough to know the make and model.
So, the little Nazi bitch thinks she made a point.
She did indeed, but not the one she thought she was making.
TSA is useless, overbearing and exceeds its authority with clockwork regularity. I have yet to see a report where the TSA caught any dangerous person. So what's the point ?
Apart from enabling some power-hungry psychopaths to have a job where they can legally indulge in their power fantasies.
"Nice fare deal you got here. Be a shame if you missed your flight."
Also worth remembering: The TSA hated the idea of the Federal Flight Deck Officer armed-flight-crew anti-hijacking program, and managed to get regulations written such that FFDOs could not carry their own sidearm onto the aircraft they were about to fly, it had to be placed in the cockpit by TSA personnel. It turned out the OVERWHELMINGLY LARGEST SINGLE CAUSE of loss of FFDO sidearms was theft of the sidearms by TSA personnel.
As Bruce Schneier said, "If you entrust your security to amateurs, don't be surprised when you get amateur security."
TSA pre-check is totally worth it. It gets you back to similar to before the 2000's in getting to your plane.
Anyway, any time I have to go through the nude-ray scanners (rape-i-scan, anyone? rapiscan?), I opt out. They have me wait 5-25 minutes, and I ask to stay with my things -- as you're supposed to not put your things through until you go through security (and put all your things completely through before you go through security). So there I am, with a small pile of bins, waiting as people issue me to take my turn in line -- no thanks, opting out.
When they finally come and call me through and escort me through not-the-metal-detector but the side entrance, stuff the bins at the head of the x-ray line, hands out, palms up, etc etc. The process begins. Some of them are new, and use pressure against your body, which pushes you over. Even a little bit of continuous pressure is a lot. Mostly, it's just the thing. They do their job, I stand there for a groping. Only one has been exceptionally thorough about the crotch. Hey, wanna feel me up, cool dude. Have at it.
After the same-gender bonding session, I go to the end of the conveyor where they've pulled all of my carry-on off to the side, and watch as they disassemble all of it in the worst possible ways. Every time it's a different reason. Travel toothpaste. Camera is a "computer" it has to be separate. Your lense was strange in the bags. Too many headphone wires. The capacitor in the camera's flash looked like a liquid item, and needs to be passed through x-ray separately. The bag of powder (soylent?) raised a concern. We can't tell what's your medicine and what's not. (??) Every time it's something different.
TSA ingress check point - same thing. "Stand in front of the camera." -- "I'd like to opt out" and I stand beside the camera. I've never been questioned or hassled, they take my ID, look at my face, look at my ID, and pass me through. Quicker for them, easier for them, *quicker* for me, and 0.001% more private for me. Comparatively, standing in line, I seen facial recognition fail 5-20% of the time, falling back to the same check they'd have if they'd opted out - the same one that I get. There's always a person at the podium to check the boarding pass and validity of the ID. Those people always watch/operate the computer for facial recognition. Nothing is gained, except more training data to feed into the system. (But yes, there are a hundred cameras all over the airport -- which track your every step to every destination, and feed every frame into the system.) Never any problems. I suppose if there were, I'd stand beside the podium, and repeat myself. "I'm opting out." Whatever happens, happens - I'm opting out. "It'll be about a 20 minute wait." "Ok."
Of course, I *always* arrive at the airport with hours in abbundance. Even if everything goes right, sometimes they swab your hands, and you set off the rapid-expansion detector. Then they tell you to come with them to a private screening room. That's always worrying: the US government has a frightening capacity to disappear people. "Can I have a public screening, please?" "No. Come with us." And in to a private screening room under the stairs, where they swabbed with 20 different swabs, testing each and every one of them separately. In the end, nothing came up, and I spent 10 minutes re-packing my carry-on, and off I went.
I don't doubt the horror stories such as those reported here, however I've never had them happen to me, in roughly 50 opt-outs. Look tired. Look lazy. Simply state that you *are* (no emphasis) opting out. "Next!" "Opt out!" (Only loud enough that they can hear me.) "Stand over there immediately next to the opening of the X-ray machine." Uhm.... "Could I stand over by the trash can, please?" "That's fine."
There's a story for another time about where I had to go out through security, and come back in (airport construction), and sat down against the wall to drink a bottle of water I'd bought after I got off the plane. Didn't want to throw it away. Nine TSA agents came up and surrounded me in a semi-circle against the wall. I stood up, and one old black dude started barking, "YOU CAN"T BE HERE! You HAVE TO LEAVE!" "Ok. Could you show me which way to go?" (they have me surrounded, I can't move without going through them.)" "You HAVE TO LEAVE." "Ok. Where how should I get out?" "YOU HAVE to LEAVE!" I just start standing there. He barks at me three or four more times, and I haven't any more patience left. He's just trying to get a rise out of me, so that he can justify attacking me. Without ever saying anything else, he and seven of the TSA walked away, leaving me standing there. One stayed behind, and asked me if I'd like him to tell me where to go. I snapped at him, "COULD YOU PLEASE?!" my patient face was wrecked. To his credit, he calmly told me to go forward toward security and back down the escalator before getting in line. Never again, LAX. I pay more to avoid it. Never again. Never again, Georgia. Never, ever again. I will fly from a neighboring city's airport. (Dude with a gun barking at someone, completely dead serious, he's gotta lose the hat. Guy goes, "what?" completely confused. And again, security tells him: you can't have the hat. Gotta lose the hat. This continues back and forth, "huh?" until after the 4th or 5th time the TSA ass says, "Chuckle nyuck, just screwin with ya man. We like the other [sports] team down here, haha." The dude with the hat was *not* amused. They did something similar with me, and I was similarly *not* appreciative. Never, ever again Georgia, Chicago, LAX. Flying outside the US is so, so nice in comparison.)
The best airports have been Boston, Orlando, Detroit (I didn't go through security), St Louis, MO. Excluding foreign airports (which are *almost* always a comparably positive experience).
They are revising TSA screening. Shoes off is now a thing of the past, and liquid requirements sound like they are on the way out too.
Every time I have been through TSA there is a whopping big sign right in front saying you have the option to opt out of facial recognition, and I have never had an agent blink when I do so. Perhaps people should extract their noses from their dumbphone and pay attention.
The line 'Politicians want it both ways' seems misleading. You can choose not to accept substitutions when shopping for groceries online, you can choose not to use smart tags when going in toll roads and so on.
In these cases the alternative might not be as fast but in cases like not using a smart tag on a toll road it wil be no worse than it was before and you dont expect to get berated by the cashier or honked at by other drivers throwing change in basket at a toll both where there is a smart tag lane. There can be all kinds of reasons not to want to use a tag, from data privacy similar to this issue to your windscreen space for one having other things there or if they charge a deposit and you hardly ever go through the toll.
In the case of this facial recondition if you come from a group under represented in the data so it is likely to be wrong or your id photo is very old and you have gained/lost weight you might always be queried and its no faster for you, you might have privacy concerns or you may just prefer to have your documents checked by a person. There is no reason not to facilitate this, and there is no reason it should be any slower for you than before facial scanning was introduced. The incentives here for owners and bosses to have staff push people to this are simply that people flowing through the airport faster with fewer staff saves money so unless legislation not only mandates opt outs be allowed but sets criminal or financial penalties for failure there is no incentive to make sure staff actually offer a viable alternative. This leads to low wage workers in understaffed areas being asked to manage the opt outs without the resources to do so because why put them in if there is no penalty when you fail. It's unfair on the those who have poor experiences opting out and it's unfair on the staff being asked to do 10 things and given time for 9.
“The report cites National Institute of Standards and Technology research that fewer than one percent of recognition attempts produced a false positive or false negative - considerably better than many biometric identifiers.”
You’re assuming that the bounds on the statistics are composed fairly rather than in an attempt to flatter the system (what is the case definition and what counts as pass:fail), and you’re not comparing like with like - in the TSA’s use case they already know who you’re supposed to be.
Even then, if they’re quoting ‘less than 1%’, it’s probably around 1% otherwise they’d say so. A 777-300 seats almost 300 passengers. Assuming 1% for both false positives and false negatives, they’re misidentifying 3 people on one flight alone. How many passenger movements are there through the likes of JFK? That system has to be failing hundreds to thousands of times per day.
And God forbid you’re one of the poor souls subject to a false positive.
> "Restricting TSA’s use of biometrics is a step backward for our national security," the letter said. In addition it would "prevent TSA from achieving staffing efficiencies through technology automation by requiring officer-based interactions – forcing 75 percent of TSA’s budget to remain tied to staffing rather than technology investment."
How about about training your staff that travellers have the right to opt out and actually allowing it with minimal hindrance? Assholes.
TSA is government funded -- just file the budget, and increase each year for inflation and "incidentals". TSA is a make-work program - gotta employ all those people who have difficulty finding a job. The problem is - make-work programs shouldn't hassle people. Send them to Virginia and have them plant apple trees, where they're out of everyone's way.
The reason for all of the facial recognition is the usual: Total Information Awareness. Almost there(!!). The end-game of the facial recognition for check-in, security, boarding - is all of automation, documentation, tracking, cataloging, etc. The usual. It doesn't remove the bag searches and x-ray screenings, but if they could identify and categorize everything in your carry-on, they would. (They're getting closer -- "You don't need to remove your computer from your bag in this line.")
If they know who you are, from your step through the door, and every single physical foot-step through the airport, they've succeeded in tracking, measuring, and data-logging you. Facial Recognition against your boarding pass is an assurance that their data hasn't gotten munged on the way from door to plane. More training data, more _verified_ data (a picture of guaranteed-you vs a human-verified ticket/boarding pass) helps create the high-quality national training data set -- for all the uses outside the airport, especially.
I'm generally very suspicious of 'the government' but in the US facial recognition is widely used at airports and border areas such as cruise terminals to speed up passenger processing. Its not just the US, either -- when we visited New Zealand earlier this year we didn't go through any human immigration or customs checks (biosecurity -- that's a different matter). You have to come to terms with the fact that because you're traveling 'they' know exactly who you are, where you're going and what you look like. Their goal is obviously to focus their staff on the outliers, the travelers who are either unknown or don't fit an established pattern (and, regrettably, AI is going to make this much worse because the system will get to know you and your habits and will flag you if you do something outside that envelope**).
One important survival trait in this modern world is to avoid calling attention to yourself.
(**Going back to the 1970s and Belfast there was pioneering work done on tracking potential IRA operatives in Belfast by collecting data on utility use and even milk consumption of households. Obviously a pilot program of limited value but it pointed the way to today's Brave New World. It was reported in the technical press at that time but what surprised me was that the general reaction was "Meh!" rather than "Oh S**t!". Still, as we all know, "It can't happen here!".)
Moat of the suggestions I've read here appear from people who don't travel that much.
It starts with your passport which, in the case of the UK, can use the photo that was used for your drivers' license. The picture is verified as acceptable as usable before its uploaded and used. You may need a picture for a visa but the more likely case is you'll need one of those "Electronic Travel Authorizations". Applying for one of these is interesting because you'll use your phone or a tablet to take an acceptable photo and you'll likely pay the application fee using a credit card. This has, of course, uploaded a wealth of information about you - who you are, where you live, what your credit's like, all sorts of stuff. This means for boring tourist types like myself and the missus all they need to do is verify that the face passing the entry desk matches the passport and travel authorization, something that they don't even need to work too hard at because they've practically got one's entire life history in the system already. Since we've already been well checked on the way through the labyrinth to the immigration desk they've had ample time to study our body language to check for tell tale signs that we're not just a couple of knackered old people anxious to get ripped off by an airport taxi but we're hiding something. (Things like airport biosecurity are also part of this process -- its maybe 20% detection, 80% theater designed to make the guilty uneasy. It works as well.) Depending on where you came from your luggage may well have (effectively) cleared customs when it was scanned at your departure point.
Older systems with landing cards and customs declarations are just like manual business systems -- they do the job but they're more labor intensive and not as all embracing as modern systems. They rely more on human intuition but its the same principle -- "Is this person who they purport to be?"..
I read a story about a couple being held back from a return flight when they didn't have the credit card they purchased the tickets with in their possession (as required on page 179 of the fine print you get with your receipt). There was no particular need, it was just a random check. The story went on to say they were able to contact a neighbor who they gave the garage and alarm codes to so that person could get the card from its hiding place and send a photo of it. I could see that in the case of suspected fraud, but random? WTH?
It's not a bad idea to book travel, hotels and car rentals through one card and use another for other purchases while on a trip. If the card being used gets compromised somewhere, at least there's no scramble to rebook everything else. Even if a hotel wants the card the reservation was made with, they are happy to accept another card. Hotels will do that as well. The reservation remains intact. Airline tickets are usually charged right away so paying again for new tickets would be the only remedy.
If security screeners were complete jerks too, so much for a relaxing holiday.
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