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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According to 346 pages of as-yet-unpublished documents obtained by the nonprofit research organization Electronic Privacy Information Center, US Customs and Border Protection is scrambling to implement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According to 346 pages of as-yet-unpublished documents obtained by the nonprofit research organization Electronic Privacy Information Center, US Customs and Border Protection is scrambling to implement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.
So this is really a law signed by Obama and Trump is just enforcing the law. Makes it sound like Trump is the bad guy. Sorta like the border prisons.Trump just is enforcing existing law.
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.
This will work, because we already saw how the 9/11 terrorists all started at the biggest airports. Oh, wait.....
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
What a great occasion to don a red Make America Great Cap and some Oakley mirror shades. To complement the outfit perhaps some face mask against the smog / dusty air.
Good luck with face recognitions, Mr. Robot.
NB: Guy Fawkes masks or Halloween masks of current and past presidents aren't such a good idea, they good give the security the idea you're up to no good. One needs to do this in the proper style.
One thing that helps immensely is not pissing off the neighbours. The USA has been very good at pissing off the neighbours, and it's gotten away very well indeed with it for decades with comparatively very little backlash. Compared to what the USA did abroad over the years, even "9/11" was a love-tap. But it was very well done in the sense that it riled up the natives (that's you, 'merkins, you.) wonderfully. To the detriment of rights, freedom, and liberty everywhere. Now that is irony.
I don't condone that thing, though. But nor am I blind to its effects and its causes. I still remember standing in awe and fear watching the thing unfold from a continent away. Awe for the sheer audacity. Fear for what the USA would do next. The terrorists won, the free world lost. And is still losing, see TFS.
Another thing that's in play here is exactly this bit:
The same thing happened with many things after "9/11". The pervy scanners that we were promised would do some things and not other things, and then turned out to not deliver on any promise made, are a good example. This is a repeat of that.
And that's bad. Regardless of the geopolitics. There are a handful of other kinds of bad also in play here. By bickering about your pet hate for libertarians you're glossing over the negative effects that are entirely avoiable regardless of your pet political hates. And that I count as a personal failing. One you share with many 'merkins, of course, but that doesn't mean you're in the right to ride that hobby horse so much.
The latter is the bigger problem and in critical need of being addressed by the federal government.
All data indicates that the vast majority of those in the US illegally entered through "authorized ports of entry". Building a wall is like pulling over the car going 60 in a 55 zone while ignoring the car going 100.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
The CCTV FRT has basically a zero percent success rate.
It's useless to look in a crowd of millions for one of a database of millions. The police basically confirm this on a regular basis.
They would be better off stopping every tenth person, in terms of catching people who might be wanted for "something" or have something they shouldn't have on them.
In terms of "spotting the terrorist in the crowd", it's literally zero arrests over many years of deployment.
Hell, they couldn't even trace the guys they wanted to speak to above the Novichok deaths recently. They had to correlate CCTV with passport data (i.e. look when that guy went through passport control and then pull the footage of that time).
Don't believe the hype about face-recognition.
Perhaps, but to continue with the metaphor, the cars that are only doing 60 might be easier to catch.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'm concerned about - in order:
1. dying from some medical problem because healthcare in this country is luxury. (hundreds of thousands die from that per year)
2. an auto accident because people are shitty drivers and have to text or yammer on their cell phones (tens of thousands)
3. Stress because I have to work 80 hours a week to appear "productive" so that my employer doesn't kick us to the curb and send the jobs overseas.
4. some sexually frustrated who shoots up the place because guns are too easily acquired and kept when people go off the deep end. Mental health isn't static. (tens of thousands die from guns every year)
5. the biggest drug problem in this country is opiates - AMERICAN made drugs. some drug addict killing me for his next fix.
Seriously, Ahmed the terrorist (or some other immigrant) isn't even on my list. Billy Bob, however, is.
And this Trump project is somehow, somewhere, benefiting some of his cronies because the Trump administration is the most corrupt one we have ever had.
Thanks Republicans!
Perhaps, but to continue with the metaphor, the cars that are only doing 60 might be easier to catch.
Maybe so, but to continue the analogy further, to spend billions of dollars "solving" the lesser problem is like the police spending millions of dollars on radar guns that don't read past 65.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
How do you pay your rent/mortgage/ISP/insurance/IRS? You're toast.
You don't need a facebook account to pay your taxes. If you're paying taxes to someone over facebook you're probably being scammed. :p
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I'll take a charter flight from a private airport with no surveillance, on my own schedule. Without having to share my travel plans. And I can prop my hunting rifle up in the seat next to me.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
The Chinese have moved to gait recognition, which I understand has better accuracy than most facial recognition, and is less prone to fooling by (for example) not showing your face, and I imagine it doesn't require as clear of a picture to work effectively.
The US is really lagging a step behind in their Social Credit System. It seems like not even Trump's executive authority is helping us to catch up. Maybe if he had better advisors, he'd have gait recognition suggested to him. Is the swamp half empty or half full? Hard to say.
How do you pay your rent/mortgage/ISP/insurance/IRS? You're toast.
You don't need a facebook account to pay your taxes. If you're paying taxes to someone over facebook you're probably being scammed. :p
You mean that offer to pay for my taxes over Facebook using iTunes gift cards was a scam? It was recommended to me by my very trustworthy friend who happens to be Nigerian royalty.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
You might as well compare 180,000 annual lung cancer deaths to 9/11.
Not likely. 9/11 was a one-off suicide attack by irrational religious fundamentalists. It probably wasn't even all that preventable.
Out of 180,000 lung cancer deaths a year an estimated 85% are caused by tobacco use. Considering that a simple law outlawing the sale of tobacco could save upwards of 153,000 people a year (that's 51 9/11's a year) from an early death, I would say that lung cancer deaths are much more tragic than 9/11.
I don't respond to AC's.
You mean that offer to pay for my taxes over Facebook using iTunes gift cards was a scam? It was recommended to me by my very trustworthy friend who happens to be Nigerian royalty.
Well, if he is Nigerian royalty you can probably trust him. There is no reason Nigerian royalty would lie to you.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
. Is the swamp half empty or half full? Hard to say.
The swamp was partially drained- and then topped back up with radioactive sludge.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Will people with Ché Guevarra tee-shirts be flagged as terrorists?
Statistics from the World Bank and the United Nations Millennium Development Campaign claim to show that “extreme poverty” has been cut in half since 1996. But this claim is misleading. Here’s why. The World Bank and the IMF define "extreme poverty" as living for a day on what $1.25 or less will purchase in the United States. You read that right. The statistic IS Purchasig Power Adjusted for the United States! The International Poverty Line (IPL) of $1.25 (Purchasing Power Parity corrected for the United States) is way to low. In 2005 the United States Department of Agriculture calculated that the average person in the United States needed at least $4.58 per day just to afford adequate nutrition! If we set the IPL at a more realistic $10 a day, we see that over 5 billion people, or almost 80% of the world’s population live in poverty today. And the number is rising. Global poverty is much worse than the what the World Bank, the IMF and the UN are telling us. The $1.25 IPL that The World Bank and the UN use in their calculations, and that Hans Rosling cites in his TED talk, is totally unrealistic, but it justifies the present economic order, and that is why it is used. This is a summary of an excellent article written by Jason Hickel that was published on Friday, August 22, 2014 and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
The US is doing what every normal nation should do.
:)
Count every person entering the USA legally.
Count every person returning to their own nation after stay in the USA.
Match the face with every passport presented and every embassy application to enter the USA.
Try and stay in the USA an an illegal immigrant? Get detected.
Walk around and near any US airport as an illegal immigrant? Get detected.
Use bus, rail, car transport to travel around the USA as an illegal immigrant? Get detected.
Apply for a bank account, rent/buy housing, request any type of gov support, pay tax as an illegal immigrant? Get detected.
Slowly all the fake, shared and re used photo ID used by illegal immigrants will be found and reported.
Airports are just the start.
Expect your bank, CC, landlord, boss, gov to enter public private security partnerships to scan every face they can in real time.
Fake and junk ID won't work when provided to illegal immigrants by a virtue signalling sanctuary city.
Every face will be legal. Every illegal immigrant will slowly be detected as more networks are created nationally to scan every face in every US state and city.
A detailed description of a person's life has to have US citizenship.
Sanctuary city ID is not going to have that connection with needed US citizenship once its wider use is attempted all over the USA
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Gah.. no. a few FYIs:
1) The technology to scan with a fairly high degree of accuracy the faces in a crowd has been pretty solid for a decade or so. The limitations are largely around the resolution of the camera and getting any given person in the crowd to look loosely towards the camera while in frame. The former is a technology problem that's not even that hard to solve the days. The latter they have methods (such as forcing you to walk through a choke point to "encourage".
2) Anyone who has traveled internationally in recent years has most likely already been through this stuff. We're NOT talking about random scanning of a crowd. We're talking about E-Gates where you are walked into a 'pen' of sorts and have to stare directly into the camera for identification before you can pass. That's *really easy.. the issues in #1 are practically eliminated.
3) Yes there are ways to fool face recognition (even the best tech out there..) but most of those methods are detectable in a controlled environment. Making your face hard to detect in a crowd is easy. Making your face unmatchable when standing in front of a camera and be unnoticed with a CBP officer standing by.. not so much.
4) You're comparing to CCTV FRT.. So much of that footage is lacking the resolution for a proper match or a good angle on the subject, etc etc.. once again the story at hand is a high resolution camera at close range with control of the subject's position. Completely different story on accuracy.