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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According to 346 pages of as-yet-unpublished documents obtained by the nonprofit research organization Electronic Privacy Information Center, US Customs and Border Protection is scrambling to implement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According to 346 pages of as-yet-unpublished documents obtained by the nonprofit research organization Electronic Privacy Information Center, US Customs and Border Protection is scrambling to implement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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
An Ice guy I talked to said that they can not refuse a citizen entry, however they can FINE a citizen for entering contrary to the rules.
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.
. 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
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"