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US Government Will Be Scanning Your Face At 20 Top Airports, Documents Show (buzzfeednews.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: In March 2017, President Trump issued an executive order expediting the deployment of biometric verification of the identities of all travelers crossing its borders. That mandate stipulates facial recognition identification for "100 percent of all international passengers," including American citizens, in the top 20 US airports by 2021. Now, the United States Department of Homeland Security is rushing to get those systems up and running at airports across the country. But it's doing so in the absence of proper vetting, regulatory safeguards, and what some privacy advocates argue is in defiance of the law.
According to 346 pages of as-yet-unpublished documents obtained by the nonprofit research organization Electronic Privacy Information Center, US Customs and Border Protection is scrambling to implement this "biometric entry-exit system," with the goal of using facial recognition technology on travelers aboard 16,300 flights per week -- or more than 100 million passengers traveling on international flights out of the United States -- in as little as two years, to meet Trump's accelerated timeline for a biometric system that had initially been signed into law by the Obama administration. This, despite questionable biometric confirmation rates and few, if any, legal guardrails.
These same documents state -- explicitly -- that there were no limits on how partnering airlines can use this facial recognition data. CBP did not answer specific questions about whether there are any guidelines for how other technology companies involved in processing the data can potentially also use it. It was only during a data privacy meeting last December that CBP made a sharp turn and limited participating companies from using this data. But it is unclear to what extent it has enforced this new rule. CBP did not explain what its current policies around data sharing of biometric information with participating companies and third-party firms are, but it did say that the agency "retains photos ... for up to 14 days" of non-US citizens departing the country, for "evaluation of the technology" and "assurance of the accuracy of the algorithms" -- which implies such photos might be used for further training of its facial matching AI.
According to 346 pages of as-yet-unpublished documents obtained by the nonprofit research organization Electronic Privacy Information Center, US Customs and Border Protection is scrambling to implement this "biometric entry-exit system," with the goal of using facial recognition technology on travelers aboard 16,300 flights per week -- or more than 100 million passengers traveling on international flights out of the United States -- in as little as two years, to meet Trump's accelerated timeline for a biometric system that had initially been signed into law by the Obama administration. This, despite questionable biometric confirmation rates and few, if any, legal guardrails.
These same documents state -- explicitly -- that there were no limits on how partnering airlines can use this facial recognition data. CBP did not answer specific questions about whether there are any guidelines for how other technology companies involved in processing the data can potentially also use it. It was only during a data privacy meeting last December that CBP made a sharp turn and limited participating companies from using this data. But it is unclear to what extent it has enforced this new rule. CBP did not explain what its current policies around data sharing of biometric information with participating companies and third-party firms are, but it did say that the agency "retains photos ... for up to 14 days" of non-US citizens departing the country, for "evaluation of the technology" and "assurance of the accuracy of the algorithms" -- which implies such photos might be used for further training of its facial matching AI.
This is what happens when globalism makes it possible for people who want to do bad things to fly from any part of the world and get here in less than a day. This is why you have always had two choices:
1. Restrictive travel and immigration policies, but high domestic freedom and low surveillance (domestically).
2. Open travel and immigration and a police state that wears a velvet glove as it punches you in the gut.
There is no libertarian option of "open travel and immigration, little surveillance" because that will last about a year before some terrorist exploits it and one up s 9/11 because he realized he could easily show up with dangerous contraband and likely not get caught.
So what happens if a US citizen refuses? They can't be denied entry into their own country. And taking that off by force would constitute legal assault and invasion of privacy. Will the courts just wave those because "At the border."
Serious question.
I work at Microsoft. They have signs on the doors telling you that you are training their AI whenever you use the door. That's right, you swipe your card for access, and they have a video camera that takes an image of your face and tries to match it to your id... they are using their own 131,000 employees to train their facial recognition algorithm!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.