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Is Homeland Security's Face-Scanning At Airports An Unreasonable Search? (technologyreview.com)
schwit1 shares an article from MIT's Technology Review:
Facial-recognition systems may indeed speed up the boarding process, as the airlines rolling them out promise. But the real reason they are cropping up in U.S. airports is that the government wants to keep better track of who is leaving the country, by scanning travelers' faces and verifying those scans against photos it already has on file... The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has partnered with airlines including JetBlue and Delta to introduce such recognition systems at New York's JFK International Airport, Washington's Dulles International, and airports in Atlanta, Boston, and Houston, among others. It plans to add more this summer...
As facial-recognition technology has improved significantly in recent years, it has attracted the interest of governments and law enforcement agencies. That's led to debates over whether certain uses of the technology violate constitutional protections against unreasonable searches... Harrison Rudolph, a law fellow at Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology, and others are raising alarms because as part of the process, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is also scanning the faces of U.S. citizens... They say Congress has never expressly authorized the collection of facial scans from U.S. citizens at the border routinely and without suspicion.
"We aren't entirely sure what the government is doing with the images," the article adds, though it notes that the Department of Homeland Security is saying that it deletes all data pertaining to the images after two weeks. But Slashdot reader schwit1 is still worried about the possibility of an irretrievable loss of privacy, writing that "If the DHS database gets hacked, it's hard to get a new face."
As facial-recognition technology has improved significantly in recent years, it has attracted the interest of governments and law enforcement agencies. That's led to debates over whether certain uses of the technology violate constitutional protections against unreasonable searches... Harrison Rudolph, a law fellow at Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology, and others are raising alarms because as part of the process, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is also scanning the faces of U.S. citizens... They say Congress has never expressly authorized the collection of facial scans from U.S. citizens at the border routinely and without suspicion.
"We aren't entirely sure what the government is doing with the images," the article adds, though it notes that the Department of Homeland Security is saying that it deletes all data pertaining to the images after two weeks. But Slashdot reader schwit1 is still worried about the possibility of an irretrievable loss of privacy, writing that "If the DHS database gets hacked, it's hard to get a new face."
nope
Airports are very public locations so there's no reasonable presumption of privacy under the 4th Amendment. This is not an unreasonable search. Now, for general policy reasons I by and large *don't want the government doing this* for what amount to privacy concerns as well as concerns about too much data being gathered with little oversight, but that doesn't make it an "unreasonable search" in any legal sense. It is possible for something to be a bad idea without it being unconstitutional.
There are a lot of people that are freaked out about the idea of facial recognition but the reality of walking through the airport without having to show a boarding pass is going to win this argument in the end. People don't like the idea of having a wire tap in their home either but how many times a day is someone, somewhere saying "hey wiretap, can cat's eat pizza?".
once more into the breach
Synthetic Aperture face scanning for seeing through makeup, beards and hair.
Then the inevitable revolt with "same density as skin" makeup!
Then face pressure washing chambers, followed by a rebirth of private flight.
Are they that bored, or that stupid... that is really the question.
There's little chance this will not be extended to cover domestic air travel as well. That's how these things always go.
Related: Homeland Security says Americans who don't want faces scanned leaving the country "shouldn't travel"
Yes, you are in public, but there is a qualitative difference between randomly noticing someone's face in a public place, and a systemic collection of everyone's biometric data in a single central government database.
But Slashdot reader schwit1 is still worried about the possibility of an irretrievable loss of privacy, writing that "If the DHS database gets hacked, it's hard to get a new face."
What peculiar thinking, in the age of cell phone cameras. Let's suppose that the government wasn't collecting this info at airports. But let's suppose that somebody else took a picture that included schwit1's face. Would his privacy be "irretrievably lost"? Would he need a "new face"?
Maybe schwit1 would just be best off only going into public while wearing a burqa and sunglasses.
Airport scanning alone: probably not - but when combined with the VIPR teams running around and other govt databases. and it turns into a "yes".
No.
Your face is already visible to the public. And if it's an issue of tracking people _leaving_ the country, there are numerous ways to leave with no supervision whatsoever. The country you are entering may want to run a check, which is perfectly reasonable.
As for the issue of collecting facial scans, I assume that they are capturing an image for the purpose of facial recognition. Meaning that they already have a picture of you on file somewhere. Which has been true since the first person ever sat for a passport or drivers license photo.
Have gnu, will travel.
Travelers are required to produce photo ID to board a plane, and that requirement has morphed into a need to produce photo ID to enter the terminal.
"The Government" already knows you are there, they saw your ID, if they see a face that is supposed to be there, either a face that slipped past security or a known face of a wanted/watched individual, that is something they need to know.
You gave up your right to annonynimty when you showed the TSA worker your driver's license/passport.
Ken
decision. He could have stopped it at any time in the previous six months, but made the decision not to. This is his fault.
At every single passport control my face was scanned. That includes the EU countries.
I am not particularly outraged by this US airport policy (though I don't travel to the US much, lately).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Probably not unreasonable by itself. It would be possible to turn it into an unreasonable search depending on what they do with the information. If they automate a deep dive into your background then somewhere along the line they probably have crossed a line violating 4th amendment rights. But merely attaching names to faces in a place where they are already asking for your id anyway probably isn't too big a deal. It just automates basically what they are doing already.
Maybe they are going to be posted on twitter, along with the rest of the voting data? All the while our dear commander in chief keeps his own tax data private.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Almost everything they do at airports today is unreasonable.
Anyone gotten a DRIVERS LICENSE in the last oh... 5 to 10 years? Guess what, your facial bio-metric identity is on file with the US Government. I do not see people jumping up and getting pissed over that. If this was done right (IE: 100% air gap the database and network) then its not too horrible. The issue is when the database gets hacked and misused.
AND LOVE EVERY MINUTE OF IT
As far as I am concerned, if the government has no specific and articulable facts that would lead a REASONABLE person to believe that you are involved in criminal activity, then the government has no right to even ask your name, let alone look you up in a database, run your license plate, or google you.
I'm pretty sure my face has been scanned every time I've entered the US for the last 10 years.
by anonymity. As tech improves it's inevitable. What we should be focusing on is making sure it doesn't matter. Ask yourself why people abuse tech? It's always the same reason. Wealth inequality. A small group of people take all the money, use it as power and then have to oppress to keep it. Everything always comes down to money. To wealth.
If you want to stop these kinds of abuses you need to create a society where the people with more money than average don't get to decide who lives and who dies. Until then it's all just deck chairs on the Titanic.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I'm waiting for the AMA to declare "Investigating Hillary Clinton" a leading cause of death.
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
Stories like these strike me as fucking hypocritical.
TSA/passport control/customers has been scanning faces of INCOMING travellers for the last 10 years, and you americans have had absolutely no problem with that, but now that it's your face being scanned, you're suddenly caring? Fuck off.
Your face is already on your passport, driver's license, and any other form of ID that exists. I don't give a shit about facial recognition software existing.
--Everyone
You really need to tone down your House of Cards binges.
I'm waiting for the AMA to declare "Investigating Hillary Clinton" a leading cause of death.
I'm waiting for "Investigating Hillary Clinton" to be added to the DSM.
You'd think that a law fellow would know the difference between pictures in public vs an unreasonable search & seizure.
Is there a way to disbar him for yelling fire in a crowded theatre?
You cannot apply the same rules to machines as you can to people because machines are force multipliers and the powers that be will always argue for the use of that force multiplier to further their agenda.
The discussion here boils down to this; is government allowed to stalk the public? If it's law enforcement doing the data gathering, then they are looking for convictions, and we are really having a discussion about stalking because law enforcement is following people around and waiting for someone to slip up so they can put them in jail. If the answer to that question is yes, and for instance the police do not need to show they are not intentionally targeting specific demographics, psychographics, profiles, and so forth of people to further an agenda, or if they are they are not prooving out why or doing so with the vast majority of the publics consent, then by all means. Lets do some persecutin'. Not like there aren't plenty of examples of that throughout history and the consequences to a culture.
From my perspective, the key difference between stalking and surveillance is simply when the public is surveilled, they have access to the ALL of the data. You provide the public with the ability to access it to do spot checking and if they want all of the data or a sizeable chunk of it, there's a reasonable fee and everyone can see who got a copy. Any time the data is accessed, it needs to be accessed by a specific person, and that data is also public. Most importantly, all of the surveillance data is available to a jury so they can make up their mind if this charge is really persecution or simply filling a quota. Otherwise, you get parallel construction.
And boy do he powers that be NOT want the public to have access to their little force multiplier, because it'd get used in the reverse direction. Namely, the public gets to learn how to make society truely better by learning from the information and taking an engineering approach. For instance, Illinois keeps putting governers in jail, if we knew who was causing the corruption or how the corruption occured in the first place, we might be able to stop it permanently e.g. by writing a constitutional amendment that the only legal taxes are ones where the money is appropriated to a specific department by a specific tax, and if there are over-runs the money is returned to the public by a reduced tax, and the public recieves a piece of paper stating exactly what taxes they have paid and where their money is going every quarter.
the reality of walking through the airport without having to show a boarding pass is going to win this argument in the end
Really? Showing a boarding pass is just about the least onerous thing you do in an airport. If it allowed them to reduce the security theatre required then I'd say it is perhaps worth it. However, since a boarding pass contains information about your seat, gate number and boarding time I am still going to want one whether or not I have to show it and once you have it showing it to someone is not really that hard.
When Europe does this it's right. Because, Europe.
Setting aside for the moment the sillyness of the no fly list and our specific paranoia about terrorists on airplanes (as compared to other more practical threats)...
If the purpose of the scan is strictly to more quickly and accurately answer the question "Is this person on a list of people we have decided should not fly?", I don't find the concept so offensive and in conflict with unreasonable search. However if the the purpose of the scan is (or becomes) to track the movement of citizens who are not charged with any crime and who are not on the no fly list, then scanning everyone that passes seems to be or at least encroaches on unreasonable search. The problem is the shift from the first purpose to the second purpose is way too easy.
The checking of ID / boarding passes has never been the limiting factor when boarding the plane. All this would achieve is moving more people from the queue outside the gate to the queue inside the airbridge or worse on the tarmac as we wait for several hundred people to one after the other get their shit together, find some space in an overhead compartment, sit down, and then stand up again when the next person needs to move past them.
If airlines wanted to speed up boarding that would abolish priority boarding and board by seat row only and additionally actually enforce which rows they are boarding. Though they pretty much have given up on priority anyway since every schmuck has a priority card now. Heck I flew in a flight once where there were 7 people who *didn't* have priority boarding, and then some business class passenger got upset when the airline refused to let him push infront of the other priority passengers. But I digress.
The more the USA tries to 'fight terrorism' with these kind of measures, the more the terrorist will win. Terrorist organisations come and go. Look back in history. IRA, ETA, Osama Bin Laden, Taiban, Al-Qaida, Boko Haram, Islamic State, and the list goes on. For one a terrorist, for the other a freedom fighter. But, they never last. The only thing changes is the way countries deal with it. If you look at the amount of terrorist attacks over the years, you come to the conclusion that the world has become a saver place. Yes, although we hear more of terrorist attacks due to better news coverage, there are less terrorist attacks today then 10 or 20 years ago. But governments somehow don't see that. They come up with more and more 'security' measures. But those measures don't make this world safer, they only take away freedom and privacy.
The USA has very strict anti-terrorism measures, but the attack in Boston still happened. The anti-terrorism measures in Europe also become more strict, but the attacks in Madrid, Brussels and Paris still happened. Airports are becoming a hard target, so terrorist move to other tactics, like simply taking a van and drive it into a crowded place. We have to accept that you can't stop it. Name an anti-terrorist measure and I'll tell you a way to still commit a terrorist attack. To only way to fight terror is by not giving in to fear.
Scanning faces at airports won't stop any terrorist. So, yes, I say they are an unreasonable search.
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
We have millions of people going through each airport every year. You'll need a pretty huge database. And a lot of people look fairly similar.
Are the false match rates really good enough to make this worthwhile?
As for facial images - US (and other) passports already require expression-neutral images explicitly for the purpose of machine recognition to make it impossible for multiple passports to be issued to a single individual. If you have a passport issued in the last decade or so, your face is ALREADY in "the system". Again, this isn't an unreasonable search and it's not creating a new security hole unless the scanning systems being installed have new, implementation-specific holes; as far as "the database" goes, you're already in there. If you've got GlobalEntry like me, your fingerprints are in there too. And while you are in the airport, you have no expectation of privacy. Ever been in a US airport? There are signs everywhere indicating that all persons and property are subject to search. You have the option not to enter if you do not wish to be searched.
Are you ok with License Plate scanners every 10 miles on the interstates?
>" though it notes that the Department of Homeland Security is saying that it deletes all data pertaining to the images after two weeks."
OK, could there be any funnier statement? That is just beyond unbelievable. So no photo is retained, no record of the comparison retained, and no meta data or biometric representation is retained, by ANY government or private agency? And how would they prove that?
The really sad part is that there are actually people out there who would believe such things. The only truly safe information is that not allowed to be collected in the first place.
(background newscast): For the 43 time this year, a muslim extremist terrorist has attacked and killed people out having fun
(Innocent young person) What is a terrorist?
(Grizzled SJW) A terrorist is a person who tries to get his way by killing people who do not agree with him.
(Innocent young person) I see. How do we protect ourselves?
(Grizzled SJW) Well, over all things, we must treat everyone the same. To make sure that there are not terrorists around, we need to make sure all get searched, have their mail red, and add all their personal information to a data base.
(Innocent young person) The news said something about middle east Muslims, shouldn't we look at them extra hard?
(Grizzled SJW) No! What are you racist? It could be ANYONE
(Innocent young person) Were there any attacks by another group in the last several years?
(Grizzled SJW) Not really, but you never know when those old ladies from Idaho may start up.
(Innocent young person) Since that one groups seems to be causing most of the attacks, wouldn't it just be simpler to not let them into the country and watch them more instead of surveying everyone?
(Grizzled SJW) Hell no! That would be profiling. In fact, I say lets invite even more of them in!!!
(Innocent young person) Ok, so they will live in your neighborhood?
(grizzled SJW) No, don't be silly. We got standards. They should live in your neighborhood, since its more affordable than mine.
(Innocent young person) I am beginning to see why they want you dead.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
I'm ok with it, as long as everyone understands about false positive matches, and gets the requisite education in statistics to treat the results with the proper amount of skepticism.
Is it illegal to wear glasses, hats or other technology that interferes with facial recognition systems in public/airports?
https://www.theverge.com/2016/...
Yes, it is an unreasonable search.
FTA: The effort is in response to a years-old mandate from Congress that DHS implement a biometric system for recording the entry and exit of non–U.S. citizens at all air, sea, and land ports of entry.
The Supreme Court can strike down illegal laws, or more specifically, ones in conflict with the US Constitution. So, just having a Congressional Order doesn't make it ethical, legal, right, or enforceable.
Additionally, this is clearly outside of the purview of the DHS. From their Mission Statement on their own web site:
The Department's border security and management efforts focus on three interrelated goals:
(1) Effectively secure U.S. air, land, and sea points of entry;
(2) Safeguard and streamline lawful trade and travel; and
(3) Disrupt and dismantle transnational criminal and terrorist organizations.
It's stated elsewhere on their website that their duty is "control of Customs". Any dictionary will define Customs for you: "the flow of goods into."
Someone leaving, possessing a human face, is not bringing anything into the country, and there is no law in place that states that departing people are subject to inspection. That duty is on the shoulders of the destination country. And BTW, possessing a human face... it's a part of your body, not an "item" being brought into the country.
This will get to the Supreme Court in a few years. How they rule (knowing the judges) is anyone's guess.
You're in a public place. You, just like the police, can be filmed and / or watched at any time.
You can't bitch about one and demand the other.
I fly at least once a week from Germany to Switzerland and back. Never once I had to show my id.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
FTA: "... According to DHS, if a U.S. citizen asks not to participate, an available CBP officer “may use manual processing to verify the individual’s identity.”"
and
FTA: "... , but DHS says that all data pertaining to the images is deleted within 14 days."
So, "If a US Citizen..." STOP right there. Hey, you TSA dipshit, I just showed you my US Passport, therefore you know for certain that I am not a foreign national, and am exempt from this facial-scanning scrutiny.
Then the deletion of "data pertaining to the images". Check your dictionary again, this time for the word "pertain". The DHS statement cannot be interpreted as them deleting data (facial-biometric-point measurements). Sure, they might delete the photos, but they will keep the photo-derived biometric data. . . for later comparison to future photos on the street? Or what? There is no prohibition of retention of this data, nor any statement relating to its future use.
It's like fingerprint databases. They don't store all of the entire fingerprints; they store the relative locations of discernible features in a given fingerprint (whorls, etc.).
So, you, the US Citizen, could be nabbed because someone committed a crime, and has the same facial-biometric profile as you. The photo of you wasn't saved––good luck proving your innocence.
Yoda, I am. First your face take off, you.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
The real question is how and by whom the gathered information will be accessed, used and stored.
They already have our faces, they already know we are traveling, the fact that they recognize us with face recognition software instead than manually checking an ID is not much of a difference. If the process ends there, then this is mostly an issue of technology replacing workers, not a privacy issue.
If using face recognition for this purpose hides other uses (beyond what's already in place) of the information gathered then it is a privacy issue and we should be concerned.
We could also raise questions about how much a privacy issue is the fact that today all of our travel history (surely by plane, probably also by train and bus, and possibly by car) is already recorded, stored and accessed, and it is not fully clear by whom and for what purpose, but that would take us outside the topic in this particular thread.
There is no expectation of privacy in a public space. Therefore, streaming cams and scanners are a-ok.
A public space is by definition a space owned by the public or paid for by the taxpayers. This includes any and all government facilities. Therefore, we need to set up cameras in Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House, including all offices, meeting rooms and vehicles, together with those of all government departments and agencies. All images and sounds should be captured into a publically searchable database.
My contention is that this will dramatically reduce terrorism and radicalism in this country.
In order to be able to determine an answer to this question, there are at least two or three factors we would have to consider - without which our answer should be that this is not OK (on the grounds that it is better to fail safe than fail dangerous). 1. Presumption of Innocence
This is the most important perspective for me. The moment we see blanket surveillance or blanket monitoring or blanket call screening or capturing license plates of all vehicles... we have moved into a scenario where the observers, through the act of capturing details of everyone, have effectively removed the presumption of innocence, *if* any related consequence emerges.
2. Rights of Access and Usage
We would need to understand all the uses to which the information captured is being put, and we would need to know the moment that those uses were changes in any way. Unless or until we know this, how can we possibly determine that this is a power or level of access that we are willing to delegate to those who have agreed to serve our administrative governments?
3. Accuracy
Obviously at the root of automated face recognition surveillance like this there is the presumption that an algorithm somewhere is going to be employed to identify 'persons of interest', with that interest being declared and defined up front... OK. But how accurate is that software? If an innocent citizen is 'detained' or 'interviewed' through this process (or worse), what protections does that person have? Could they sue the government for wrongful arrest? For a detention that caused them to miss a flight? For associated expenses? With power comes responsibility. A government requesting the authority to monitor citizens in this scenario must accept full responsibility for any negative consequences that occur as a result.
4. Privacy
Who would gather and have access to this information? Would the work be performed directly by the government for government use only, or would the work be performed by private contractors? If the latter, who would own the data being collected - and more importantly, what rights could a private contractor have to 'do other things' with the data, i.e. What if they wanted to try and 'monetize' it in some way. For that matter, what if the government wanted to do that?
5. What is the Risk/Threat?
OK, so we can infer from the OP that someone in government believes that this is a good idea. Why is that? What, specifically, is the threat? How was this analyzed? Once we take existing safeguards into consideration, what is the residual risk? Can the proposers identify any negative consequence that has happened in the last say 5 years that this solution would have irrefutably stopped?
6. What is the Cost?
So if we get to the point where we have answers to all of the above questions and they seem reasonable - and I am not for one moment suggesting that we are there already, then what is the cost of implementing this security? Obviously there will be the argument that it is cheaper than eyes-on-glass, built that would be a specious argument because we don't have that today (as far as we know). But we still need to perform a Cost-Benefit Analysis [and maybe factor loss of freedoms in to the cost] before we can determine that this is a good idea.
This is neither a simple nor a binary question. There are far too many variables, far to many potential up-sides and down-sides that simply have not been articulated. Most importantly, the potential for misuse and abuse is so high that nothing as powerful and far-reaching as this should be considered without some very careful controls.
Because you can bet that if this scheme goes ahead, it will be declared a success and followed with similar approaches at railway stations, bus depots, shopping malls, street corners. Then anyone running a private CCTV camera will be legally required to push copies of their image streams to central monitoring, until the only way to disappear from view will be to escape to the wilderness [and then hide in a cave to miss the passing satellites] or crawl under a duvet.
There are several reasons why this might be a good idea. But I'm not hearing any of them set out with anything like the right level of detail.
Just like Vince Foster
It's so common there's even a name for it - Arkancide!
When the pretence is that everyone has a unique face and computers are magic
And then it turns computers aren't better at it except in ideal scenarios which the people using the tech don't understand how to guarantee.
Just like with DNA testing, this will end up being subject to the mercy of complexity and error ranges.
Is your name known? Got facebook? Government got your picture already, thousands of them. What's next? Driver license can't have your picture on it?
Oh no a giant database of faces (probably) without any names associated with them! Whatever shall we do. I mean this has to be the worst thing ever! I mean there definitely isn't a giant search engine that allows people to do quick searches to easily invade people's privacy. And there for sure aren't any social media sites out there that do that even better!
"the Department of Homeland Security is saying it deletes all data pertaining to the images after two weeks."
Bull. Fucking. Shit.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
It is.
then they do not have the power of the government to enforce it. If they do, then that entity becomes the government's representative and the difference is therefore anulled.
If you wanted to argue it that way, and I am not convinced you are correct...
Oh, and to the AC, "this is a picture, so not a search", yeah, right, and if I take a photo of you in the nude, or your wife, or one of your daughters, then that's just a picture, so not an invasion of your privacy, right? Retard.
One that blocks the government from dredging up any and all data and keeping it until foreverity, and from using data gathered for another purpose than the one it was gathered for. Any expansion of use must be publicly debated as if starting anew, not weaseling it through with a "oh but we have the data already".
So no keeping traveler data for whatwasit, 75 or 99 years. No stuffing driver's licence photos in databases for facial recognition. In fact, don't even keep the photos once the license gets printed, since it's *only* ment as an easy check that the card belongs to the holder. No using electronic toll devices to follow cars all through the city. And so on, and so forth.
And all the other evidence, right? I mean, apart from all the evidence, there's no evidence!
I fly at least once a week from Germany to Switzerland and back. Never once I had to show my id.
Your case doesn't apply here. It is only among EU countries because they have their own contract (for certain benefits).
Tracking who enters and leaves that is.
Department of Homeland Security is saying that it deletes all data pertaining to the images after two weeks.
100% unadulterated bullshit!
Nope, airports in the US are generally privately-owned/managed locations.
Don't know where you got this idea but this is not true. Most airports in the us are owned by public government entities of one form or another. Airport operations are typically contracted out to private companies. Twenty seconds on google would have cleared that up for you.
Private shopping malls are also free to establish policies that would seem to be in violation of basic constitutional rights - because they are on private property, and because governments are not implementing those policies.
No they do not get to violate your constitutional rights just because it is private property. The extent of their remedies in the event that you haven't committed a crime on their property is to ask you to leave. That's hardly a violation of your constitutional rights.
I must have missed Switzerland joining the EU.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
How does this keep better track of who is coming and going better than a passport. Sure a human could error when glancing at a passport, but so could a machine. One thing humans are very, very good at is matching faces. So I don't imagine the human error rate is very high.
...after the N$A gets their copy to keep. Two weeks? Ironically the same amount of time it takes to purge a Facefarm account.