TSA Is Testing Face Recognition At Airport Security Checkpoints In Las Vegas Now

American Airlines has started using facial recognition technology on passengers at boarding gates, part of a growing industry trend that airlines and airports say will make travelling faster and more secure.

American is using the technology at Dallas/Forth Worth International Airport in Texas, where passengers can get their face scanned instead of using their boarding pass to board the plane,local news station CBS 11 News reported.

Passengers, however, still need both their boarding pass and an ID, like their passport, to get through airport security.

The technology is currently opt-in only, and passengers can use their IDs instead, American said.

 CBSDFW

For now it is only being used in Terminal D of the airport, which is used for international flights, but American said that it plans to expand the technology to 75 different international boarding gates across its terminals.

Brandon Duggins, American’s senior manager for international operations at the airport, told CBS 11 News that “most of the travellers are actually excited about it. It’s new technology.”

In a statement, the airline called the technology an “additional convenience during the departure process.”

Anticipating data privacy concerns, American said that it does not keep the pictures of faces: “No customer biometrics will ever be stored.”

It said that the images scanned are sent to a cloud database used by US Customs and Border Protection.

Facial recognition is now being used more and more for airline travel

A growing number of airports and airlines are embracing facial recognition systems, with 14 airports using the technology as of August 2018, according to the Washington Post.

US Customs and Border Protection said that technology will eventually be expanded to all US airports that fly internationally.

American Airlines previously trialed facial recognition at Los Angeles’ LAX airport at the end of 2018, and the airline said it will “continue evaluating the program and its potential expansion to more locations and flights throughout its global network.”

The technology is also used by German airline Lufthansa at LAX, with the airline calling it a “faster and more convenient processes for guests to move through the airport.” Delta Airlines uses it at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. AirAsia also uses the technology

The technology is also in use in airports like Singapore’s Changi airport and London’s Heathrow Airport.

Heathrow said that its 2018 trial of the technology found that the technology could “reduce the average passenger’s journey time by up to a third.”

The technology is also used in the electronic passport gates that have been introduced in many countries. The UK government says the gates “provide a faster route through the border as they allow eligible passengers to be processed quickly and securely.”

But the increasingly widespread use of facial recognition systems has caused privacy concerns.

Silkie Carlo, the director of UK digital rights group Big Brother Watch, told the BBC in 2018: “The growth of real time facial recognition in public places is alarming.”

“It could be the final nail in the coffin for individual privacy and the right to be anonymous in public.”

She pointed to where the technology has been controversial in the UK: “Even if some uses are socially well-intended, it is a technology that lends itself to authoritarianism as we have already seen in the UK where it has been used to monitor protests and collect biometric photos of innocent people.”

Some campaigners think that the use of the technology should be paused to have a greater discussion about how and why it is used.

Jeramie D. Scott, national security counsel for the US Electronic Privacy Information Center, told The Washington Post last year that “there is very little federal law that provides any type of protections or limitations with respect to the use of biometrics in general and the use of facial recognition in particular.”

He said: “We need to take a step back because there will be consequences that we might not think about unless we sit down and have a meaningful discussion.”

The Transportation Security Administration will use face recognition technology at security checkpoints at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. The good news is you can opt-out. The bad news is that the program in Vegas furthers the TSA’s ongoing efforts to expand biometric technology more broadly.

According to a document from the Department of Homeland Security about the initiative, the face recognition pilot will help the TSA gauge its “ability to compare the passenger’s live facial image at the checkpoint against an image taken from the passenger’s identity document for passengers who opt to participate.”

To do this, checkpoints will have a camera-equipped Credential Authentication Technology device that’s meant to validate a person’s ID as legit, take an image of said ID, and snap a picture of that person’s face. It’ll then compare those images to verify a person’s identity.

With its face recognition technology, TSA will collect a dumb amount of data about participants, including their ID information including where it was issued, date of travel, date of birth, and multiple photographs that include real-time images, among other personal information. That information will be stored on a TSA encrypted hard drive “and retained for subsequent qualitative and quantitative analysis” by a team with the DHS.

The document claims the data will be deleted no later than 180 days after the DHS receives it. It further claims that the hand-off of this data will occur in-person at McCarran, in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, or “by certified mail or courier.”

The new pilot follows testing of biometric verification technologies at other airports, including a similar face recognition program at Los Angeles International Airport last year and fingerprinting for TSA Pre travelers at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport and Denver International Airport in 2017.

In a statement about the initiatives last year, TSA Administrator David Pekoske said that the agency “hopes to increase security effectiveness and stay ahead of the threat.” Efficiency is also cited by the TSA as a motive, because—to be fair—absolutely no one enjoys standing in long-ass security lines.

But while TSA swears up and down that it’ll make it clear that the program is optional, Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU’s Project on Speech, Privacy, and Technology, argued that if the system sees a wider rollout, it will effectively “socialize people to accept face recognition and normalize the technology, inevitably be subject to mission creep, and expose people to the judgments of unreliable and biased algorithms.”

Evan Greer, deputy director of digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future, told Gizmodo in a statement by email that facial recognition technology “is so dangerous that it’s generated widespread backlash from across the political spectrum. Even in this deadlocked Congress there is growing bipartisan support to rein in this invasive surveillance.”

“It’s outrageous that TSA is continuing to expand its use of biometric scanning at a time when there is widespread consensus that we need to at the very least pause the spread of this tech so we can have a meaningful public debate about what role, if any, facial recognition surveillance can play in a free and open society,” Greer added.

The DHS appeared to be heading off potential privacy critics by noting that signs will be posted about the devices at McCarran and “hand-outs will be available so that individuals may make an informed decision about whether or not to participate.” It is my humble but informed opinion that you should not.