I don't understand this. I don't think we should have facial recognition tracking us as we walk down our streets, and I do think the TSA is mostly a jobs program, but airports are already high security areas. I have to buy a ticket under a real name, present ID, consent to a search, and be funneled through multiple checkpoints (bag drop, TSA, gate). Having the cameras already watching me also perform recognition isn't that big of a jump.
The only thing I can figure is the people with power who get to flash credentials and walk through, or skip the terminal all together, don't want their face automatically recognized and recorded. If these Senators were really concerned about privacy they would force the TSA to dump all records after 3 months, not just biometric
It's simple for me. How has the TSA done handling security since its inception without facial recognition? No buildings knocked over by airplanes? Cool then we don't need to degrade our expectation of privacy any more than we already have.
I don't think I get this one, either. Not like I personally want to be surveilled or anything, but for better or worse, the TSA inherently has to use facial recognition because they're required right now to check your ID and see that you look roughly similar enough to the picture on it and the name matches the boarding pass to let you through without further questioning. The way this is titled right now isn't even accurate. They're not trying to ban facial recognition. They're just banning the automation of it. The automated facial recognition service they currently offer also isn't mandatory. Anyone that uses it is doing so voluntarily. They're banning people from volunteering to pay the cost of being added to a database in return for saving a few minutes at security checkpoints. Why not ban precheck then? Is it less invasive to have your fingerprints in a database compared to having a scan of your face in one?
> They're just banning the automation of it. The automated facial recognition service they currently offer also isn't mandatory. Anyone that uses it is doing so voluntarily.
For someone concerned about mandatory face scanning, there is a good argument against permitting the TSA to do voluntary face scanning, which is that the voluntary often becomes the mandatory. As an analogy, consider doing business with the government. Many government agencies will only do business with you if you have a phone number (increasingly an app) and pay with credit or debit card, all practices that started out as voluntary conveniences but morphed into requirements.
You could describe this process in a variety of ways, depending on how much agency and malevolence you want to ascribe to the decision makers: "ratchet effect", "slippery slope", "boiling the frog", etc. Regardless of name, the process tends to look like this: first give people the option to do B instead of A. Then give people an incentive to do B. Then, once most people are doing B, deprioritize A (which makes it inconvenient). Finally, remove option A when there are only a few people left to complain. The TSA is already pushing the envelope with PreCheck and adding more categories to the No Fly List.
It works very well. Consider your comment: "but for better or worse, the TSA inherently has to use facial recognition because they're required right now to check your ID" (emphasis mine). Your logic isn't wrong, but it's starting from the premise of how to better serve what is being done right now rather than what should be done. Consider that the US only started requring airlines to check IDs a few years before 9/11, and personal identification is only indirectly related to the security of an airplane (why there's all those people checking your shoes despite knowing your name and face). The effect of airport IDing is mainly as a tool for law enforcement interdiction and to bolster airline profits by preventing ticket switching. Similarly, after the TSA has built a national database of face models, there is no reason this data has to be used primarily for airline security.
REAL ID act:
"OFFICIAL PURPOSE- The term `official purpose' includes but is not limited to accessing Federal facilities, boarding federally regulated commercial aircraft, entering nuclear power plants, and any other purposes that the Secretary shall determine. "
This does not have the effect you claim it does. Despite significant efforts, the airport ID checking component of REAL ID has not gone into effect, after decades of can-kicking and playing chicken with individual states that haven't implemented REAL ID locally. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2022/12/05/dhs-announces-extension-...
Laws don't have to be enforced, but it's still the law. You asked for a law, and REAL ID is one. Although it isn't fully enforced, the provision for an ID is fully enforced. It's just not required to be a REAL ID, but an ID is required.
Which provision, specifically, are you referring to? The REAL ID pdf you linked does not contain a "provision for an ID" in airports separate from 202(a)(1), which is not yet in effect, and will likely get snoozed for a few years again in 2025. Furthermore, even if it were in effect today, it would not require the checking of IDs; it merely prohibits the checking of non-REAL IDs.
There is a simple experiment you can do to test this yourself. Just attempt to board a US domestic flight without showing any personal identification. You will most certainly not be allowed through security.
>You will most certainly not be allowed through security.
Yes you will be.
I did it. Me. Personally.
If you show up at the airport and your wallet is 200 miles away and your flight is in 45 minutes they will, unquestionably, irrefutably, let you onto your flight.
Step 1: Go to the counter and tell them you don't have your ID.
Step 2: They typey-type on their computer and print out some stuff.
Step 3: You take that stuff to TSA and they ask you some questions like "what is your address? what is your date of birth? and things like that"
Step 4: They wave you through and you go to your gate and wait to board.
I was told that it is not uncommon for people to forget or lose their IDs.
I find it pretty funny that the top of the website says "Adult passengers 18 and older must show valid identification at the airport checkpoint in order to travel." Yet later in the page it says you can still travel without it.
Thanks for sharing, I wonder how many people miss flights because they aren't aware of this. That being said, I doubt one could get away with traveling exclusively using this method.
The outcome is obvious - I'll be denied boarding. What that doesn't tell me, and what I was asking upthread, is whether anyone can provide a statutory justification for this, or if it's just TSA arbitrarily exercising power.
> We find it notable and praiseworthy that this bill (text of bill as introduced), isn’t an attempt to “regulate” TSA use of automated facial recognition or to bolt on controls on how this surveillance technology or facial images or other data (event logs, etc.) collected by such systems. Rather than imposing regulations, the bill would impose a categorical ban on TSA use of automated facial recognition at airports, at least for now. If this bill is enacted, the TSA would be allowed to use facial recognition technology in airports only if that use is explicitly authorized by new legislation enacted after the passage of the “Traveler Privacy Protection Act of 2023”.
So why not explicitly authorize it instead with a bill, with the desired guardrails?
The point of the TSA is to harass political opponents of the current regime. To the extent that it actually reduces crime (I refuse to use the propagandistic and loaded term “terrorism”) that security screening could just as easily be done by the airline like it used to. You better hope you don't like the wrong post on social media and get a little SSSS on your boarding pass.
TSA procedures seem random to me. I flew on a Friday and was groped over my clothes at the checkpoint (hands feeling my crotch). I flew back on Monday morning, with the same clothes and same carry-on with the same contents and was not patted down at all. (I am male FWIW.) Facial recognition in return for not being groped would be ok with me.
The downside is that you then normalize pervasive and invasive monitoring... Soon people will be accustomed to it and expect it when they walk down the street... Not the world I'm looking for.
Personally I'll take the grope. In fact I MAKE them grope me by opting out of their silly scanners. (I also wear a kilt often, which used to be fun before they all got training on how to deal with that...)
If everyone did this it would bring the TSA to its knees and make a strong statement about just how much security theater we're actually willing to tolerate.
The grope is good, it trains you to be calm while having your privacy violated. I recommend opting out of the mmwave to get the grope each time you travel.
You may find yourself living in an authoritarian dictatorship in the future and be thankful for all the practice.
Beautiful comment. The Grope is Good would make a great band name or campaign slogan, or maybe both.
Ill never forget asking a TSA guy if he was sure mmwave was really just sound. "Yes! Its just sound waves, completely harmless," he assured me. "Less than your phone makes in your pocket!"
If you refuse the mmwave you always get groped. You can often line-pick or time things to get the metal detector instead, though these days you often can't.
The only thing I can figure is the people with power who get to flash credentials and walk through, or skip the terminal all together, don't want their face automatically recognized and recorded. If these Senators were really concerned about privacy they would force the TSA to dump all records after 3 months, not just biometric