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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."
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
You think that perhaps it is time to do away with the drivers license? At least for non-commercial drivers.
The drivers license is mission creep at its worst. Had it not been for the creation of the drivers license we'd likely not have so many other interactions, public and private, needing the showing of ID. Buying alcohol would not likely require the showing of ID today if so many adults did not already have an existing ID that met that requirement. Can you imagine the outrage if everyone had to go to some state office to have their picture taken to buy a beer? I imagine a large portion of the population don't even think much of the nonsense to show a driver license to get into a bar or buy a six pack at the grocery store. I thought we wanted people that drank alcohol to not drive?
Now we have "motor voter" laws where people can register to vote at the DMV. Can I go to the county auditor's office to get my license to drive? If it goes one way then why not the other? Then there is "Real ID" which wanted to turn the driver license into a passport. There are laws to indicate organ donation preferences on a driver license. People go to the DMV to get a non-driver identification card. So, you have no intention to drive, or are unfit to drive, but you must go to the DMV to get a card that let's you vote, indicates organ donor preferences, allows you to travel as a passenger on a bus, train, or plane, allows to to buy alcohol and tobacco, and basically everything but allow you to drive. At the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Yes, I have a problem with the DMV taking my picture. I have a problem largely because the license to drive is no longer a license to drive. If it were then the only person I'd be required to show it to are law enforcement investigating a traffic violation. I should get an odd look for showing my driver license to a bank teller when making a withdrawal. As an experiment I once gave a different form of ID to a teller, a government issued and perfectly valid form of ID by the way, and I was asked if I had a driver license to show.
Once after I had moved I went to buy a rifle for some hunting. My license did not show my current address so I brought ample, and I mean AMPLE, forms of identification to meet ATF requirements to buy the rifle. The store refused to do the paperwork for the transfer until I had a current ID from the DMV. (Having to show who you are at all to buy a rifle is another rant.)
The issue is when the database gets hacked and misused.
We are long passed that now. You can argue on if it's been "hacked" if it's being used for things like ID to vote, or buy a beer, but I mentioned nothing about how people have abused the driver license system for fraudulent means. DMV databases get "hacked" all the time, through corruption, mismanagement, and actual computerized copying and manipulation of databases.
I do not see people jumping up and getting pissed over that.
You found one.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
No. Driving is a privilege, not a right.
Assume I agree with you, how does the absence of a license prevent people from driving? You can say it's a privilege, and to exercise it one must submit themselves to a written test, test of eyesight, having their photo taken, and so forth. How is this enforced?
Due to a mix-up while I was in the Army my license to drive was revoked but I didn't know about it. I drove for four or five years not knowing I didn't have the "privilege" to drive. I found out only after I went to have my license renewed. To get my new license they made me take a "driving test", which involved taking a lady in uniform for a drive around the block and managing to not hit another car in the process. The license to drive is a joke. If that's what people are tested on to get the "privilege" of driving then just get rid of the license, it tests nothing.
By most estimates there are millions of people driving without a license in the USA today. Seems to me that they are likely some of the safest drivers out there because they don't want to get caught. The truth is that every day is a "driving test". If you pass then you retain the "privilege" of being able to continue driving. If you fail, then you are punished for your failure.
Some may ask, how would we deal with bad drivers if they don't have an ID? I ask in return, how do we deal with those millions of drivers that don't have a license now? Whatever the answer is, do that.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I must have missed Switzerland joining the EU.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap