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Singapore Airport May Use Facial Recognition Systems To Find Late Passengers (fastcompany.com)
Singapore's Changi airport, which is widely touted as one of the best airports in the world, is testing use of facial recognition systems to find late or lost passengers in the airport so they don't delay their flight for everyone else onboard. From a report: Changi Airport is looking at how it can use the latest technologies to solve many problems - from cutting taxiing times on the runway to quicker predictions of flight arrivals. It comes as the island state embarks on a 'smart nation' initiative to utilize technology to improve lives, create economic opportunity and build community ties. However the proposed use of cameras mounted on lampposts that are linked to facial recognition software has raised privacy concerns. Steve Lee, Changi Airport Group's chief information officer, told Reuters that the airport's experiments are not from a "big brother" perspective but solve real problems. "We have lots of reports of lost passengers...so one possible use case we can think of is, we need to detect and find people who are on the flight. Of course, with permission from the airlines," said Lee.
Yes, there's no way a boss/politician could ever look at that and think, "I bet we could use that for finding terrorists..."
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When you enter an airport you have zero expectation of privacy anyway as you already had to pass multiple checks (including photo id) to get in, so why would it matter if there is constant monitoring inside the airport as well?
I can see a ton of real value especially in recognizing someone who is supposed to be on a plane in fifteen minutes is not near the gate and not headed that way. They could even have staff drive a cart over and help especially slow or confused people, it could actually end up being really friendly and helpful unlike the dystopian scenario that always comes to mind when we imagine complete monitoring.
Facial recognition is just a tool, while we should be mindful of uses that are creepy or dangerous, we should also not categorically dismiss truly useful real world uses just because there are also mis-uses possible.
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"Of course, with permission from the airlines."
Why should airlines be asked for permission? Why not the people actually being scanned?!
You're misunderstanding. They already plan to use facial recognition on the passengers. They need to ask the airlines for permission to access flight manifests and bookings, and most likely tie in with check-in counters and kiosks to actually match names to faces (either by storing the photo when a passport is scanned, or have a camera trained on each check in counter). Depending on the systems used by the airline this could lead to possible exposure to payment or contact information of passengers, and possibly proprietary airline data. That's where it gets tricky. But the passengers? They're SOL in terms of privacy control. I guess you could wear one of those little surgical masks? It's an asian airport so at least you'd fit in and wouldn't look too weird.
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The late passengers should miss their plane. To go rummaging them up, trying to find them before the plane leaves, will only encourage the bad behavior of not getting to the gate area on time. Also, I have the distinct opinion that this "feature" is really a cover for having active facial recognition in the airport.