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Facial Scanning Now Arriving At US Airports (npr.org)
According to a report via NPR, a Geneva-based company called SITA that develops information technology for the world's airlines has installed facial scanning cameras at Orlando International Airport. "Britain-bound passengers -- some wearing Mickey Mouse T-shirts and other Disney paraphernalia -- lined up at Gate 80 recently for the evening British Airways flight to London's Gatwick Airport," reports NPR. "It looks like any other airport departure area, except for the two small gates with what look like small boxes on posts next to them. Those boxes are actually cameras." From the report: Sherry Stein, a senior manager at SITA, says the cameras are triggered when passengers step onto designated footprints. "We collect a photo, send it to CBP, who checks to make sure that person is booked on the manifest and matches the photo that they already have on file." If everything matches, Stein says, "we open the doors and give them the OK to board." All that happens, she says, "in three to five seconds." If things don't match, the traveler's passport is scanned manually by a gate agent. CBP is testing biometric scanning at a dozen or so U.S. international airports to ensure that people leaving the country are who they say they are, and to prevent visa overstays. The Transportation Security Administration, another agency within the Department of Homeland Security, is testing similar devices at security check-in lines.
It's happening to everyone (including US citizens) who leave the US. Not enter. That's the issue.
Russians must be laughing their asses off at the Americans. During Soviet times, bet they didn't think that the US would move towards a system just like theirs or East Germany's, where you needed permission to leave the country. But that's what the US is doing, all under the guise of safety and keeping residents of "shitholes" out. Congrats to us.
Agreed. For as much as Russia has and keeps doing, we seem hellbent on racing to catch up to them.
"All this is is replacing a human with a computer."
The human who looked at me and compared my face to the photo has forgotten my face about a minute after processing me and no permanent record was made of it.
The computer stores that photo forever in a searchable database. So... yeah... its completely different.
In the past it was for color of law parallel construction to track faces connected to drugs.
The court approved question would be are you a US citizen and that would provide a location to place sets of cameras.
The same secure location would then be used as cover for drug enforcement to take a image of the driver, passenger, back/front license plate.
So that was data was always getting collected all around the USA. license plate.
Now the same is going to be extra legal at every other location.
Bus, train, airport, port, toll roads... any location where the population gets collected at.
What was once Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... is now going to be fixed CCTV in public and private partnerships.
A Domain Awareness System for all of the USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
No matter how good a percentage you have (below 100%, of course), the birthday paradox will give you a ton of false positives.
It's because you're actually doing N*(N-1) comparisons, where N ::= (the number of passenger a day at the airport + the number of crooks you're looking for). For a probability of 1-(1/365) (ie, 99.7% accuracy), you get a 100% chance of a false positive after 367 people... see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The German security service supposedly identified somebody's grandmother as a terrorist, and stopped the experiment abruptly.
davecb@spamcop.net
AC its the interconnected state and federal database behind the scan thats the amazing new part in the USA.
Illegal migrants who could used their decades of created papers where once assured that the papers on the day would never be cross referenced with any other deeper US federal and state, city databases due to federal "privacy" laws.
With advanced new CCTV getting every face that search could be wide and deep into many very different US databases.
Criminal, courts, FBI, state, city, federal, DMV, public/private partnerships, huge amounts of past social media data sold to the US gov.
Illegal migrants with a collection of average US paperwork will not longer be able to wonder in and out of the USA secure that their image will pass as it always did.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
where you needed permission to leave the country.
You don't need permission to leave the country. You need permission to enter if you aren't a resident, and some people are avoiding that step. They're also avoiding leaving when their permission runs out.
This is an old story. We hashed this to death a couple of months ago.
I hate flying now. Every trip reminds me of how an attack by few men with a few planes has us throwing out the Constitution. The attack was terrible, but the fact that bin Laden predicted it would lead to a U.S. government crackdown on its own citizens really pisses me off.
We should have been better, braver.
The computer stores that photo forever in a searchable database. So... yeah... its completely different.
Your photo is already in a searchable database. Your travel data is already in a searchable database. It's not "completely different".
If they screen people when they leave, how long before they start restricting citizens from leaving? A "no travel list" vs a "no fly list" -- people will start finding themselves on it due to unpopular views. Remember, the current administration is known for extreme pettiness.
Government shouldn't be given this power.
My passport photo is in a searchable database.
My travel data is already in a searchable database.
My photo taken as I cross each border is NOT.
It is very different to have a single photo taken for an identification paperwork to being photographed everywhere you go.
If they screen people when they leave, how long before they start restricting citizens from leaving?
I can play that game, too. If they keep citizens from leaving, how long before they shoot you to death while standing in line? This is fun. Can we make up more fanciful stuff instead of talk about what is actually happening?
You probably don't realize, if the government really wanted to stop people from leaving they'd implement customs and immigration exit points like a lot of other countries already do. For example, when you exit Germany, you go through immigration where they stamp your passport and check you.
Government shouldn't be given this power.
Government already has the power and responsibility to control the borders. I would say "if you don't like it go to some other country", but those other countries are a lot stricter about such things than we are.
My photo taken as I cross each border is NOT.
Big deal. They can look up your photo they already have from your travel data.
It is very different to have a single photo taken for an identification paperwork to being photographed everywhere you go.
Then don't go to an airport because they already video everyone there.
There really is nothing new they are learning about you by this system. You don't even know that they are keeping the facial scan once you leave, you're just making that part up. We can make up all kinds of evil things, but unless they actually happen they're just make-believe intended to create more flames than info.
In Germany, you can literally walk across the French border without being screened. e.g.
http://static.panoramio.com/ph...
BTW, as far as the shooting example, if they murder you, they can't milk you for tax money for the rest of your life. In East Germany, they let you leave at age 60, when you were no longer useful to the State. Who says the US won't do the same to prevent a "brain drain", considering the current tide of anti-intellectualism that will likely send smart, productive people running.
In Germany, you can literally walk across the French border without being screened. e.g.
What does that have to do with what happens at an airport?
The rest of this flight of fiction could be fascinating, but not tonight. It's a waste of time playing "what if" games.
What difference does it make whether you leave the country by air, train, or foot for the purpose of immigration enforcement?
I thought the department of homeland security was a temporary thing. Yet here you are now, 17 years later. And they have money to advocate for anything they want to do, the same as your ministries of education and health.
Amazing how that happens.
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"Then don't go to an airport because they already video everyone there."
And until recently surveillance video was pretty ephemeral, and even if they hung onto, virtually worthless unless someone was paid to watch it, looking for you. It's a pretty new development that they can even theoretically make automated use of it, and track people recorded in surveillance footage.
"You don't even know that they are keeping the facial scan once you leave, you're just making that part up."
I know you aren't that naive.
Says the Anonymous Coward.
State ID card. I'm flying from San Diego California to Austin Texas and must provide a valid ID. Don't drive so I must goto the DMV to get another type if ID. Also I want to bring two walkie talkie radios with me, hope they're not confiscated.
What difference does it make whether you leave the country by air, train, or foot for the purpose of immigration enforcement?
If you're leaving for a non-Schengen destination by air, you'll go through border controls before boarding the plane. If you're flying to another point within the Schengen Area, you don't even need your passport, just your state-issued ID card showing that you're a Schengen national. Doesn't matter if the airport's in Germany, France, or even Sweden. If you're crossing a land border between two Schengen countries, you generally just walk, ride, or drive past the little "Welcome to $country" sign by the side of the road. Germany checks your papers on trains coming into the country; I don't think anyone else does right now.
Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Criminal recidivists (and their crimes) are well known to authorities. I mean why harass millions of travelers at airports to catch dealers when they deal practically openly on city streets.
How is it an issue?
You already need a passport with a photo. How is taking an up to date photo a problem?
It's not a problem per se. However, some people don't like it because of how the information will be used or because of how they're afraid the information will be used. The general rule in a free society should be defense-in-depth of that freedom, which includes both limiting the amount of information about an individual that the government collects and limiting the ways in which the government can use the collected information.
We have relatively small limits on these things. The most significant is a mostly-court-created doctrine to protect us from having the results of unreasonable search and seizure be used against us in a court of law. We should all be able to understand easily why that is inadequate to protecting individual freedoms: once information is collected it can be misused in ways that curtail freedom without going to court. And even if it is used to bring a case in court, the majority of cases are never tried.
Even that small limit on government data collection is almost, but not completely, nonexistent at the airport. The airport is considered the functional equivalent of the border and the First Congress authorized the complete search of all areas of a ship for contraband, so obviously the founders didn't consider thorough searches at the border "unreasonable" under the Fourth Amendment.
Why do I say the prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure is mostly court-created? The U.S. Constitution prohibits the federal government from engaging in unreasonable searches and seizures. When some state governments got too intrusive on individual liberties in the twentieth century, the federal courts began pretending that the guarantees in the Constitution applied against state governments. There are two sanctions for violating the rule: the most common is that evidence can't be used in court against the person whose rights were violated. The other is that occasionally a person whose rights were violated will sue for money damages or to prevent such a violation.
Real lawyers write in C++
Russians must be laughing their asses off at the Americans. During Soviet times, bet they didn't think that the US would move towards a system just like theirs or East Germany's, where you needed permission to leave the country.
Please show me airport taking an international flight where your passport is not checked on exit.
Schengen zone excepted of course.
Seriously I'm struggling with this concept. Exit checks have been part of flying since flying existed. Errr. actually since passports existed. These cameras are also in airports all over the world and I actually think the USA are among the last to get them.
The human who looked at me and compared my face to the photo has forgotten my face about a minute after processing me and no permanent record was made of it.
Then you weren't paying attention to what he did with your passport while you were busy looking at his face.
Making a copy of my password photo is not the same as taking another picture of me.
I drove into Canada for a vacation, and on return to the US got a fair number of nonsensical questions. Where do you live? Where do you work? I could see the half-dozen cameras I drove past as I approached the booth, so I knew he already had that stuff on his screen. Whatever. I look like the guy pictured in my passport, my wife looks like the woman pictured in her passport, and yeah, I know about the border exemption, so knock yourself out if you want to look in my trunk, but please just speed it up.
Hungary has entry checks. Rented a car in Germany, drove around in Central Europe for a couple of weeks, but they did stop us at the Austrian-Hungarian border. No questions were asked, no passports were pulled out, but we were also in a German-tagged car and were clearly of European ancestry. Also, we were driving a station wagon (no trunk to hide things), and we’re both in our forties, so not exactly the kind of people trying to smuggle stuff or ourselves into the country.
And... how long before they start doing this for domestic flights? Are there laws against wearing facial makeup to mess with the facial recognition?
Making a copy of my password photo is not the same as taking another picture of me.
Not making a copy, they have that already. But rather logging in or out. There's really no reason they need another picture of you on file, they have that already and it was part of your passport application.
Lay off the crack pipe. As bad as the Big Brother nonsense has become, it is nothing remotely like what people had to deal with on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Baby steps, baby steps, give it time. Trump's blatent hatemongering about outsiders is very much in the style of an East European or Latin American caudillo.
Yep. Remember when you didn't need to show your "papers" just to travel within the US?
Read "The Feast of the Goat," ideally in Spanish if you can. The parallels between Trujillo-era rhetoric in DR and Trump-era rhetoric in the US are telling, and disturbing as hell.
The part im offended by is taking and keeping more pictures, and recording more interactions.
I couldn't care less that various countries record that I arrived or departed. Or that they can see my passport photo.
When we're talking about a facial recognition system at an airport, it is kinda relevant whether you are at an airport or not. Don'tch think maybe?
virtually worthless unless someone was paid to watch it, looking for you.
They don't have to look for you. They have you scanning your boarding pass at TSA, and then again at the gate when you get on. Two specific times where they know who you are and where you are standing. Make that three if you check in at the airport. If you don't think they can correlate the video they are already collecting with those times, then you aren't a very good conspiracy theorist, are you?
I know you aren't that naive.
In other words, you are making that part up. Thanks for admitting it. As for me being naive, who is it that thinks they don't already have the information that you think they are getting from this facial recognition system?
If you don't think they can correlate the video they are already collecting with those times, then you aren't a very good conspiracy theorist, are you?"
So let me get this straight; I'm "making it up" by asserting they keep the photo they take at the automated passport control terminal. But, you are going to assert, without any proof, that they've kept all the surveillance video. In what universe does that make sense? Where they keep all surveillance VIDEO of the hallways.. .but discard the PHOTOS at passport control?
The default is to assume they are keeping the photos. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. And even if they said they weren't we shouldn't beleive it unless its been independently audited. (The temporary photos taken by the xray scanners were being kept, even thought they weren't supposed to be. So, no, the burden of proof rests with the person asserting they are not being kept. Deal with it.
"If you don't think they can correlate the video they are already collecting with those times"
Of course they can. But do you think there is a database anywhere out there indexed by every single passengers name and passport with links to all the bits of video footage of them walking around airports? I don't. I'm sure if someone were sufficiently interested, they could recover that footage based on the time stamps, find me at check-in as a starting point, and then work through all the hundreds of cameras to find my path through the airport camera to camera to camera from point A to the restaurant, to a waiting area, to a shop, to the bathrooms, finally to point B where i scan again to board.
"who is it that thinks they don't already have the information"
What information specifically are you talking about, that you think I think they don't already have? Because at this point I have no idea what you are driving at.
If you don't think they can correlate the video they are already collecting with those times, then you aren't a very good conspiracy theorist, are you?"
That's what I said about you.
So let me get this straight; I'm "making it up" by asserting they keep the photo they take at the automated passport control terminal.
You had no support for that claim when I suggested you were, so what should I assume? We're not talking about the "automated passport control terminal". That's done for inbound passengers from international flights.
But, you are going to assert, without any proof, that they've kept all the surveillance video.
I made no such claim. I said that they can easily match your image in that video with your location at up to at least three specific places where you must present ID of some kind. Whether they keep the rest of the video or not is irrelevant.
Where they keep all surveillance VIDEO of the hallways.. .
You're the only one talking about the hallways. I gave you three specific places, none of which were in a hallway. Checkin, at the checkin counter or kiosk, TSA security checkpoint, and at the gate (where this facial recognition system is.)
but discard the PHOTOS at passport control?
We don't have "passport control" in the US for outbound passengers. I thought I pointed that out to you already. Germany does, as does many other countries. US does not. You do not need permission to depart.
The default is to assume they are keeping the photos.
And yet you seem to think they don't have photos of you from check-in, TSA check, and the gate? Which is it, assume they keep them all and they already have anything that this facial recognition system would be snapping, or they don't keep anything until now they will with this facial system?
The point is, this facial recognition system gives them NOTHING that they don't already have. It allows matching two images they already have -- you in the line to leave and your passport or other entry photo. That's all.
Of course they can. But do you think there is a database anywhere out there indexed by every single passengers name and passport
Yes. That information is provided to them by the airlines long before you depart.
with links to all the bits of video footage of them walking around airports?
You're the only one trying to make that connection.
find me at check-in as a starting point
They don't have to find you. You hand the agent your passport and she scans it. They know where you are. You've just told them. They know what camera covers that check-in terminal and they snap your image. Bingo, they have your image.
and then work through all the hundreds of cameras to find my path through the airport camera to camera to camera from point A to the restaurant
Are you deliberately misinterpreting what I said or are you really that dense? They don't have to track you camera by camera, and they don't care about the restaurant. I said that the second place they get your picture is at the TSA checkpoint, where you once again hand the agent your ID that is scanned and bingo, they have your image. Don't you think they know which camera covers which checkpoint?
And the third point where you have your identification (this time a boarding pass) scanned is at the gate, and once again, they know perfectly well what camera covers that gate and they once again have your picture.
What information specifically are you talking about,
The information that is allegedly being captured for the first time by the facial recognition system that is the topic of this discussion. A picture of you today, as you are traveling, as compared
I don't remember if you specifically made that claim
Yes, it was you. You said:
My passport photo is in a searchable database. My travel data is already in a searchable database. My photo taken as I cross each border is NOT.
Your photo is almost certainly being taken at each of three points as you depart through that airport. Either you assume they're going to keep all the photos they take of you or you dont' assume that. If you assume they do, they you can't claim that this facial recognition system gives them anything new, because they've already got the photos of you traveling. In fact, they'll have a photo of you as you are scanning your boarding pass -- the same point in your travel that the facial recognition system is taking one.
If you assume they DON'T keep the photos of you traveling, then you have no basis to assume they'll keep the photo that this facial recognition system takes. Be consistent. Either they're out to get you and gather as much info about you as they can or they aren't.
"and to prevent visa overstays" Huh? You want to detain people for visa overstays as they're trying to leave the country? How does that help?