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."

Comments

Very public location, no constitutional issue

[JoshuaZ]

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.

Re:Very public location, no constitutional issue

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess it may meet the definition of a public place. But it doesn't SEEM like it should since everyone inside the secured area has paid a rather large fee to be there, there is security to keep others out, etc. The location is owned by a company. It seems like it would be a private place. But if the definition of public is that anyone not on the 'no fly' list who ponies up a large fee and doesn't carry weapons or even water can enter a privately owned facility - then it is a public place.

Re: Very public location, no constitutional issue

[KGIII]

If you wish to argue it that way, and I am not convinced you're correct, then the airport would be the entity giving permission to search.

The consumer wants this

[deathguppie]

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?".

it will extend to domestic travel in time

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:it will extend to domestic travel in time

[Anonymous Coward]

They may tell you it's only to match a face to a boarding pass... until you find out that all those face scans that have been attached to name, address, card used to buy ticket, account/email used to buy ticket, source IP used to buy ticket, what else was purchased with card used to buy ticket, etc.... and so on now resides in a database that the gov wants to access in the name of 'security'. Then it's no longer used for face to boarding pass.

A database like that is too valuable to interests to stay private for long.

Re: it will extend to domestic travel in time

[kenh]

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.

Really?

Let's take the example of a lone police officer and a face in the crowd.

The officer can spot a face in the crowd accidentally (meaning not specifically looking for it), that's OK, right?

Now, what if the officer is actually looking for the face in the crowd? That's still OK, right?

What if that officer uses a security camera and chooses to review the tape off-line (not in real-time), is that OK?

What if the officer and a friend are going to go thru the tape off-line, is that OK?

What if the officer employs a computer to draw his attention to likely matches in the video tape, is that OK?

It seems like your issue isn't really privacy, but instead efficiency... or fairness - facial recognition gives the police an unfair advantage, makes it harder to hide in public.

Let's not forget

[kenh]

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.

Re:Let's not forget

[Anonymous Coward]

You gave up all your rights when you decided to be a pussy and tolerate whatever evil shit your government does instead of removing your leaders if they do not respect individual liberty and civil rights.

FTFY

Never ending story

[Aethedor]

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.