This sounds pretty insane indeed. How much should we be concerned about that? The gvt already has our image data, and knows our moves anyway right? Even without facial recognition, IDs and passports are asked when you travel, so the documentation of your travels already exists I assume?
We should be very concerned, because this is obviously testing the waters before rolling out ubiquitous facial recognition. I honestly and earnestly believe that use of facial recognition technology should be banned in all its forms. The applications are limited and the downsides are massive.
In this particular case, the application of facial recognition improves airport security (against forged passports, sloppy security personnel, ...) while not probably requiring any additional information than what would already be provided by passports with biometric data.
In my opinion, this is one of the few applications where it actually makes sense.
You need to first ask if you're protecting against a threat that actually exists and is material. Is that the case? Do we see rampant use of forged ID to get onto planes? Do we see sloppy security personnel letting people through who shouldn't be allowed? I just don't see the evidence that this isn't a solution searching for a problem.
Could you please elaborate on the downsides? Gov't has your data since you were born, complete with your photos, IDs, you name it. What makes you think it's any different now?
The difference is that ubiquitous facial recognition allows for near seamless tracking of individuals and explicitly without a warrant or their consent. It's an important milestone because it moves us from a "reasonable book keeping" level of tracking to full blown seamless tracking and again importantly, without our consent.
To imagine it a bit more viscerally, imagine instead that the system had no cameras and instead required you to submit your daily movement report at the end of each day. An agent walks from door to door and you hand him your written report of exactly what you did today and that gets entered into the Government Saftey and Oversight Commission Database. What are they going to use all that data for? There are only a handful of good reasons, but a disproportionate list of bad reasons that explicitly limit freedom.
Second to that. Would you be as comfortable going to a strip club or a fringe political gathering or a conference for a controversial topic if you knew you had to put it in your report? It has a chilling effect on freedom of movement and pushes fringe activities that are perfectly safe and legal into the darkness.
I think you’re right. Maybe we should skip the facial recognition and install RFID tags behind our eyes, after all, they basically know all of that info already anyways.
No one said they didn't track anything already. But they don't have the full picture yet. Many people pay cash for things. Currently no tracking if you just visit somewhere and don't pay for anything. Not everyone has GPS enabled on their phone.
Ubiquitous facial recognition fills in all of this missing data well enough, and without you doing anything but walking out your front door.
As long as the biometric data is held only by a government agency, and not shared with the airline, I don't have any issue with this. If this is implemented correctly, the airline should only get a response saying who the passenger is, or an error if they aren't recognised or aren't on the manifest for this flight.
Passports already store biometric data, which I assume is also stored in some government database when you have it issued, so I don't see what's wrong with using that for something useful.
For anyone without a private jet maybe. Does anyone seriously think the FAANG corporate boards will ever in their lives have to undergo this? If the feds wish to be paparazzi, then we should all give them something to really behold.
> Does anyone seriously think the FAANG corporate boards will ever in their lives have to undergo this?
Yes, me. All of them will already be used to being hounded by paparazzi, and it would be very human for them to mistake that for normal. Two of them (Facebook and Apple) already use face recognition in their products.
Anonymity? They get their own Wikipedia pages and personalised conspiracy theories. Even “mere” multimillionaires like my first boss after graduating got that plus endless personal fan letters.
Anonymity is not the same as privacy. Mark Zuckerberg is known worldwide and has no ability to be anonymous. However aspects of his private life (his Facebook messages, for example) are far more private than the average person.
