- 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.
For international flights, US citizens can opt out but foreign nationals have to participate in face scanning, with some exceptions.
Which exceptions?
I’ll bet one of the exceptions is having a bunch of money.
I remember when travelling in the US (Im a foreigner) there was a vip pass thingy to skip lines and enter without even talking to a migration officer (I think). Really seemed like a rich person pass
I’m Canadian and I used to have a pass like that. It was $50 at the time and valid for 5 years.
Hey everyone, this guy’s loaded!
I’m going to assume they can you the moment you walk into the airport.
I used to be extra during the TSA body scan BS. And honestly, I felt like they won.
They’ll always win because they can just prevent you from flying.
I tried to refuse the face scan and they looked at me like I just grew eye stalks. After a long pause, I said never mind I need to catch this flight, let’s do it.
It’s not a hill I’m willing to die on, even though I’m disappointed with the practice.
I’m okay with the TSA scan (pre-check) since… you know… they already have you if you took a picture for your ID.
Those “clear” people however. Who TF thinks it’s a good idea to hand your biometric info to a corp?
As I said. They already have it.
Clear is now a TSA “vendor” for the precheck process. The machines they use for the sign up process - at least the airport I was at - don’t have the eye scanning camera in the kiosk.
The Clear representative I was asking questions of had said they don’t require eye scans for Clear, though that is the default. People can ask to use just fingerprints, which he said does disrupt the terminal process as the agents don’t think to ask if fingerprints were what was registered when the eye scans fail.
I am not advocating for Clear. I refuse to use them. I simply do want to call out that they are one of 3 who handle the process for the TSA now. People do have a choice of which of the three to use.
How did you get into TSA Pre without providing fingerprints? I tried once, and they strictly refused to let me apply because I wouldn’t give fingerprints.
Well, I’ve had DLs in multiple states and they all required fingerprints. The little digital ones. Maybe that’s not the case everywhere though.
Like I get it, it’s scary and I don’t want them to have my data, but my picture is being taken ALL the time basically everywhere I go. Is putting my foot down for this specific type really making a difference?
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I have global entry, so they already have my biometric data. I’d love to not here scanned, but this point it wouldn’t be anything they didn’t already have.
You’re already on hundreds of cameras by walking into any airport in the world. Do they need your consent to run facial recognition software on the security footage?
I used to work for a company that did various kinds of biometric recognition. I unfortunately was paraded past these cameras many times for testing purposes, so my face was compromised many moons ago.
We had two kinds of products we installed in airports. When looking at large crowds most airports wanted cameras that would monitor the flow of traffic, determining if there were any bottlenecks causing people to arrive at their gate (or baggage claim) after their luggage.
The other product was facial recognition for identification purposes. These are the machines you have to stand right next to. There are various legal reasons airports did not want to use any crowd-level cameras for identification. They hadn’t obtained consent, but also, the low resolution per face would lead to many more false positives. It was also too costly.
But we did have high def cameras installed in strategic locations at large music halls. These private companies were less concerned with privacy and more concerned with keeping banned individuals out of their property. In those cases, we registered faces of people who were kicked out for various reasons and ignored all other faces.
My point I guess is twofold: first, you might not be facially tracked in as many places as you think you are. Second, eventually you will be and there’s not a whole lot we can do to stop it. For many years, Target has identified people with their payment card, used facial recognition to detect when they return to the store, and used crowd tracking to see where in the store you go (and sometimes they have even changed ad displays based on the demographics of people standing nearby).
Mostly, you will be identified and tracked when there is financial incentive to do so.
Brit here. About eight years ago I flew from London to Belfast and return for business. We don’t need a passport to travel to Northern Ireland, just photo id like driving licence is fine.
Coming back to London I approached the gate and before I could pull out my wallet to show my id, the guard says " Good evening Mr. Codandchips have a safe journey "…
Yes they have facial recognition, the cameras are visible but you don’t notice them.
Facial recognition poses privacy risks, including potential data breaches,
I know you’re using the acceptable legal term.
As a Cybersecurity person, the “potential” data breaches we talk about, today, are really pretty certain, at this point, in history.
We may work towards a collective genuine ‘potential’, where the breach might never happen, someday, with effort.
Turns chair around and sits straddling it like a cool youth mentor.
Y’alls faces at airports are definitely getting leaked on the dark web.
The good news is it might take enough years to leak that your appearance might happen to change in between.
It’s about normalizing survellience, and the article also says this as an opinion further down in the text.
Everyone can see that we are going towards the society in black mirror, with social scores, and people being punished for not complying with rules of any kind. I’m glad I’m kind of old because the future will suck.
If you already have a passport and opt out of facial recognition, you’re only deluding yourself into a false sense of privacy. In fact, if you enter the screening area at all in an airport, you are kidding yourself if you think you can maintain some semblance of privacy. The government knows what you look like. Calm down and move on with your life.
Fuck calming down. That’s how we got into this mess in the first place. People are to complacent with privacy. Anyone that thinks this attitude won’t lead to terrible things is a fool.
You’re never going to live in a world where you’re allowed to fly without photo id amigo.
That’s not what the other user is saying - we have to fight to keep what rights we have, and maybe one day gain some of the ones we lost
For international flights, US citizens can opt out but foreign nationals have to participate in face scanning, [with some exceptions]
I had no idea we were already at that point.
always wanted to visit the US. I guess that won’t happen then.
I refuse to participate in this dystopia. But I’m a little worried this will make me a recluse
Trust me you’re already a recluse relative to most by being on here. If you observe what passes for a “normal” “person” these days, they will endlessly scroll algorithmic ai-generated incomprehensible horrors on Tiktok, then purchase something through an ad from temu, they do not think. They are gone.
But once you stop worrying that you may be saying no to experiences too much purely on principle, then you’re free to go even further and eradicate surveillance capitalism influence from your life altogether. One day you can ascend to even go smartphone-free.
If you observe what passes for a “normal” “person” these days, they will endlessly scroll algorithmic ai-generated incomprehensible horrors on Tiktok, then purchase something through an ad from temu, they do not think.
Can you just like, not be so damn condescending and elitist? Literally saying people who use TikTok and purchase stuff from Temu are sub-human…
Yeah I’m sorry, I just feel pretty strongly about this I guess and Lemmy is one of the few safe places to vent to like-minded folks.
To explain myself a little: It’s not the “normies” that the techy people hate, it’s the perverted messed up world those less savvy in technology live in and everything about it, and with how much we’ve learned to circumvent corporate control it’s often a culture shock to see that people just take it, even stuff like online ads or algorithmic content feeds, stuff I haven’t experienced in probably a decade, like as if that’s just normal, and the sad part is it is for so many.
Imagine if most of the world population was just falling for pyramid schemes or other blatant financial scams constantly. That’s how it feels.
It becomes all too easy to blame the people rather than the systems that led to this, and sometimes it just feels like nobody outside of the hacker (classic definition) circles really gives enough of a shit to take control of the few things they can, and this is late stage capitalism, so I can’t really blame them, we’re all so tired just trying to survive.
Stupid privacy people. What’s the worst that could happen? A fascist coming into power next year who could misuse the data?
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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.
Planes <<<<<< trains.
You’re too smart for this site. I too love taking trains across both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans!
Opt out. If we don’t exercise our rights, we lose them.
"What if they retaliate and make life difficult for me? "
That’s both illegal and against policy. If someone delays your right to travel for this specific reason, delay their job by asking for their supervisor and their name and employee number. Then file a complaint. That will dissuade that public servant (and their leadership) from exhibiting such behavior and encouraging it respectively.
“But they are capturing your image in 10 skillion other public locations.”
- Sure, and you have the option to create your own privacy in public.
- Further, what’s the real purpose of the scanner at the TSA check if they already have that detailed image of your retina, your facial pore patterns and whatever the fsck else they store? They don’t have that level of detail yet on CCTV.
If you don’t care, then that’s fine. Some people don’t mind the slow encroachments on 4th Amendment protections. Cool. Others do. Cool also. That’s why we can opt out.
There should exist a law that orders privacy by default forcing all this intrusive stuff to bi opt-in instead of opt-out. With data, it is often to late if it is only opt-out…
Agreed. This was rolled out without any regard whatsoever for people’s interest in data privacy. That kind of entitled behavior from any government agency is just plain gross.
