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Delta Airlines Tests Facial Recognition To Speed Up Baggage Check-In (cnn.com)
Would you let Delta airlines scan your face if it meant you could skip the line to check-in your baggage? An anonymous reader quotes CNN:
Delta is testing a face-scanning kiosk for baggage check... It uses facial recognition technology to match your identity to your passport photo. You tag your own bags, pay the fee and drop your luggage on a conveyor belt... Delta will test four of the machines at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport this summer. The airline spent $600,000 on the four kiosks.
A senior staff attorney at the EFF warns this could be a slippery slope -- at what point this morphs into airline surveillance? But a Delta spokerspeson insists the images won't be stored, that they're complying with privacy laws, and that the kiosks could double the number of passengers whisking through their check-in procedures.
A senior staff attorney at the EFF warns this could be a slippery slope -- at what point this morphs into airline surveillance? But a Delta spokerspeson insists the images won't be stored, that they're complying with privacy laws, and that the kiosks could double the number of passengers whisking through their check-in procedures.
Given recent news reports about altercations between airliner personnel and passengers, I wouldn't at all be surprised if airlines began video surveillance of ticketing booths gates, and the interior of airplanes. The problem with cell phone video is that it almost always misses the beginning of the incident. So if the industry feels they are being wrongly criticized by the news media replaying and relying exclusively on cell phone video to characterize a story, they are going to respond by installing 24/7 surveillance video.
The main actor I can see working against this isn't the EFF. It's the NTSB. They won't want video of people in a plane cabin dying in a plane crash to become public. Because planes are much safer than cars, but any such video would cause irrational people to drive rather than fly, leading to more net deaths. For ticketing booths and gates, I suspect DHS already requires 24/7 video surveillance. Especially after the terrorist attack at Amsterdam airport.