DHS Is Starting to Scan Americans' Faces Before They Get on International Flights

["Dave Farber" <dave () farber net>]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: Thu, Jun 22, 2017 at 3:41 AM
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] DHS Is Starting to Scan Americans' Faces Before They
Get on International Flights
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>


DHS Is Starting to Scan Americans’ Faces Before They Get on International
Flights
By Harrison Rudolph
Jun 21 2017
<
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/06/21/dhs_s_biometric_exit_program_is_starting_to_scan_americans_faces_before.html
>

Air travel already features some attributes of a police state. Metal
detectors. Bomb-sniffing dogs. Pat-downs. A gloved TSA agent peering at
your toothpaste. But it could get worse. What if your check-in also
involved a face recognition scan?

Decades ago, Congress mandated that federal authorities keep track of
foreign nationals as they enter and leave the United States. If the
government could record when every visitor stepped on and off of U.S. soil,
so the thinking went, it could easily see whether a foreign national had
overstayed a visa.

But in June of last year, without congressional authorization, and without
consulting the public, the Department of Homeland Security started scanning
the faces of Americans leaving the country, too.

You may have heard about new JetBlue or Delta programs that let passengers
board their flights by submitting to a face recognition scan. Few realize,
however, that these systems are actually the first phase of DHS’s
“Biometric Exit” program.

For certain international flights from Atlanta and New York, DHS has
partnered with Delta to bring mandatory face recognition scans to the
boarding gate. The Delta system checks a passenger is supposed to be on the
plane by comparing her face, captured by a kiosk at the boarding gate, to
passenger manifest photos from State Department databases. It also checks
passengers’ citizenship or immigration status. Meanwhile, in Boston, DHS
has partnered with JetBlue to roll out a voluntary face recognition system
for travelers flying to Aruba. In JetBlue’s case, you can actually get your
face scanned instead of using a physical ticket.

While these systems differ in details, they have two things in common.
First, they are laying the groundwork for a much broader, mandatory
deployment of Biometric Exit across the country. Second, they scan the
faces of everyone—including American citizens.

Treating U.S. citizens like foreign nationals contradicts years of
congressional mandates. DHS has never consulted the American public about
whether Americans should be subject to face recognition. That’s because
Congress has never given Homeland Security permission to do it in the first
place. Congress has passed Biometric Exit bills at least nine times. In
each, it has been clear: This is a program meant for foreign nationals. In
fact, when President Trump issued an executive order in January on
Biometric Exit, it was actually reissued to clarify that it didn’t apply to
American citizens.

Why should you care? Well, think of what could happen when DHS’s airport
face recognition systems misfire. And they will. With an error rate that
could be as highas 4 percent for the JetBlue system—and with countless
people flying—false rejections will be a daily occurrence. That could mean
missing your flight because the system fails to recognize you. The best
research available indicates face recognition performs worse when an image
is more than six years old. That’s a serious problem when your passport or
driver’s license photo may be a decade old. Other research suggests that
face recognition systems have a harder time matching the faces of African
Americans, women, and children. When these systems make mistakes, will DHS
subject you to the more intensive Secondary Screening? Will you be taken to
an interrogation room? Will you be turned away altogether?

What’s even worse is there is good reason to think Homeland Security’s face
recognition systems will be expanded.

[snip]

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