Slashdot Mirror
Faces Are Being Scanned At US Airports With No Safeguards on Data Use (nytimes.com)
schwit1 writes:
The program makes boarding an international flight a breeze: Passengers step up to the gate, get their photo taken and proceed onto the plane. There is no paper ticket or airline app. Thanks to facial recognition technology, their face becomes their boarding pass.... The problem confronting thousands of travelers, is that few companies participating in the program, called the Traveler Verification Service, give explicit guarantees that passengers' facial recognition data will be protected.
And even though the program is run by the Department of Homeland Security, federal officials say they have placed no limits on how participating companies -- mostly airlines but also cruise lines -- can use that data or store it, opening up travelers' most personal information to potential misuse and abuse such as being sold or used to track passengers' whereabouts.
The Department of Homeland Security is now using the data to track foreigners overstaying their visas, according to the Times. "After passengers' faces are scanned at the gate, the scan is sent to Customs and Border Protection and linked with other personally identifying data, such as date of birth and passport and flight information."
But the face scans are collected by independent companies, and Border Protection officials insist they have no control over how that data gets used.
And even though the program is run by the Department of Homeland Security, federal officials say they have placed no limits on how participating companies -- mostly airlines but also cruise lines -- can use that data or store it, opening up travelers' most personal information to potential misuse and abuse such as being sold or used to track passengers' whereabouts.
The Department of Homeland Security is now using the data to track foreigners overstaying their visas, according to the Times. "After passengers' faces are scanned at the gate, the scan is sent to Customs and Border Protection and linked with other personally identifying data, such as date of birth and passport and flight information."
But the face scans are collected by independent companies, and Border Protection officials insist they have no control over how that data gets used.
People who did not pay their tax and wanted to sneak out of the USA on "another" passport. :)
:)
Illegal migrants who thought their "new" passport would never get cross referenced with any other US database.
People who asked for "protection" in the USA going back for a holiday in the nation they "escaped" from for a few months.
Criminals who created an entire fake life with a entire new passport ID story suddenly get detected from that old city/state police image
Database sharing and reconciliation between city/state/federal systems is going to find a lot of faces who would have been ok if they had not risked international travel
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
See how the government does things? TSA, for your "safety" crap. Body searches, now face ID scans, how long until they mandate barcode tattoos or implanted ID chips? Couple that with the "convenience" of using your phone, chip card to access "money" and they'll end the use of cash, and couple all of this together and they gotcha.
if you're very wealthy then nothing bad will happen to your data and it will be well cared for.
Oh, you meant for the rest of us? Well, if you're gonna make a two tiered justice system you've got to break some omelets or something.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
What exactly is someone going to do with a scan of your face? Is someone going to hack in and 3d print a facial mask of your face and then try to get through airport security with a plastic face? I just don't see what value this data has to anyone. I guess if you had data on a large enough group of people you could find people who are close enough matches to fool the system to yourself or other members of your group.
Comparing "driver's license" photos to the new airport face scans are not equivalent at all.
You can't do too much with a single, low res, front-on, photograph, as per your driver's license.
The airport face scans are high resolution, well lit, taken from multiple angles, use IR face profiling (like what the iPhone does), and has a very high* probability that the person being photographed is the person on the documentation.
*Your scare mongering above not withstanding, people using other people's passports for travel is extremely rare.
The motivation here is all about creating a much better database containing face information so that low res, off-axis, poorly lit, CCTV (and similar) video footage can be face matched, just like you see in the movies.
That is where we are going with this, and I believe it really will be a dystopian authoritarian future. You can accept that if you want, but I, for one, do not want to.
I'm from Australia, I pretty much expect this when I come to the US. In fact; I'd would have been surprised if this wasn't the case.
I fail to see how better, more objective, enforcement of the law is a bad thing.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Obama already did that one. Now Trump is busy stealing it from Obama. It's been a tradition for at least the last 50 years for each President to steal the reputation of "Worst President Ever" from the previous one, and I don't see Trump as the bottom of the barrel yet.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Why? It's not illegal to collect data of people walking around in public spaces.
Try taking pictures/video of police stations or Federal buildings from public property, or try photographing police/government officials in public to collect their biometric/facial-ID data.
It would be a good idea to retain a lawyer and arrange your affairs for a long absence first, however.
Some animals are more equal than others.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
1984
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
That happened under Obama. Dumbass.
Obama already did that one. Now Trump is busy stealing it from Obama. It's been a tradition for at least the last 50 years for each President to steal the reputation of "Worst President Ever" from the previous one, and I don't see Trump as the bottom of the barrel yet.
Who have you got that's worse than Trump? Even Kim Cardassian would be better than Trump.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I don't know, but I'm confident *somebody* will turn up in either 2020 or 2024. Trump only gets to act the way he does because he's taking Obama to the next level. Maybe somebody who will nuke Mexico, maybe somebody who will nuke the New York Stock Exchange, but either way, it can always get worse.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.