- Travelers can opt out of facial recognition at US airports by requesting manual ID verification, though resistance or intimidation may occur.
- Facial recognition poses privacy risks, including potential data breaches, misidentification, and normalization of surveillance.
- The Algorithmic Justice League’s “Freedom Flyers” campaign aims to raise awareness of these issues and encourage passengers to exercise their right to opt out.
I figure that by being in the airport there’s enough footage of my face from security cameras that I didn’t consent to (other than by being in public) that the scan of my face while boarding is moot.
Opting out of this face scan in particular is like using Chrome to browse the web, but searching with DuckDuckGo “for privacy reasons”
There’s probably a huge difference in resolution.
Sure, but what’s stopping them from just adding whatever high res cameras they want in their terminals and jet bridges anyway? How can we be sure they aren’t already doing that? The only thing the face scan does that those cameras can’t is require you to lower your mask.
As the article points out, TSA is using this tech to improve efficiency. Every request for manual verification breaks their flow, requires an agent to come address you, and eats more time. At the very least, you ought not to scan in the hopes that TSA metrics look poor enough they decide this tech isn’t practical to use.
More likely they’ll just remove the option to opt out
Budget probably.
Yeah, because just adding high-res cameras is not good enough.
They will need a good quality data transfer network with it and also have to use higher powered computers for data processing, to get whatever they want out of those videos.
They might even have to pay *shriek* C++ devs to rewrite their Python prototype into a more efficient production code (and considering how hard it is to find devs that actually know what they are doing…).
There is a reason I wear a large hat and a mask when walking through the airport and generally keep my head tilted down. I also wear large sunglasses, but that’s as much because every airport has at least one giant wall that is nothing but glass and inevitably I will walk around a corner and get face fucked by the sun. The privacy is just a bonus 😅