US Government Will Be Scanning Your Face At 20 Top Airports, Documents Show (buzzfeednews.com) 111
An anonymous reader shares a report: In March 2017, President Trump issued an executive order expediting the deployment of biometric verification of the identities of all travelers crossing its borders. That mandate stipulates facial recognition identification for "100 percent of all international passengers," including American citizens, in the top 20 US airports by 2021. Now, the United States Department of Homeland Security is rushing to get those systems up and running at airports across the country. But it's doing so in the absence of proper vetting, regulatory safeguards, and what some privacy advocates argue is in defiance of the law.
According to 346 pages of as-yet-unpublished documents obtained by the nonprofit research organization Electronic Privacy Information Center, US Customs and Border Protection is scrambling to implement this "biometric entry-exit system," with the goal of using facial recognition technology on travelers aboard 16,300 flights per week -- or more than 100 million passengers traveling on international flights out of the United States -- in as little as two years, to meet Trump's accelerated timeline for a biometric system that had initially been signed into law by the Obama administration. This, despite questionable biometric confirmation rates and few, if any, legal guardrails.
These same documents state -- explicitly -- that there were no limits on how partnering airlines can use this facial recognition data. CBP did not answer specific questions about whether there are any guidelines for how other technology companies involved in processing the data can potentially also use it. It was only during a data privacy meeting last December that CBP made a sharp turn and limited participating companies from using this data. But it is unclear to what extent it has enforced this new rule. CBP did not explain what its current policies around data sharing of biometric information with participating companies and third-party firms are, but it did say that the agency "retains photos ... for up to 14 days" of non-US citizens departing the country, for "evaluation of the technology" and "assurance of the accuracy of the algorithms" -- which implies such photos might be used for further training of its facial matching AI.
According to 346 pages of as-yet-unpublished documents obtained by the nonprofit research organization Electronic Privacy Information Center, US Customs and Border Protection is scrambling to implement this "biometric entry-exit system," with the goal of using facial recognition technology on travelers aboard 16,300 flights per week -- or more than 100 million passengers traveling on international flights out of the United States -- in as little as two years, to meet Trump's accelerated timeline for a biometric system that had initially been signed into law by the Obama administration. This, despite questionable biometric confirmation rates and few, if any, legal guardrails.
These same documents state -- explicitly -- that there were no limits on how partnering airlines can use this facial recognition data. CBP did not answer specific questions about whether there are any guidelines for how other technology companies involved in processing the data can potentially also use it. It was only during a data privacy meeting last December that CBP made a sharp turn and limited participating companies from using this data. But it is unclear to what extent it has enforced this new rule. CBP did not explain what its current policies around data sharing of biometric information with participating companies and third-party firms are, but it did say that the agency "retains photos ... for up to 14 days" of non-US citizens departing the country, for "evaluation of the technology" and "assurance of the accuracy of the algorithms" -- which implies such photos might be used for further training of its facial matching AI.
Obama signed into law. (Score:1, Informative)
So this is really a law signed by Obama and Trump is just enforcing the law. Makes it sound like Trump is the bad guy. Sorta like the border prisons.Trump just is enforcing existing law.
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Presidents are allowed to pick and choose which laws to follow? I'm not sure that's the argument those who claim Trump is a dictator want to be making.
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So this is really a law signed by Obama and Trump is just enforcing the law. Makes it sound like Trump is the bad guy. Sorta like the border prisons.Trump just is enforcing existing law.
"Bad Guy" is subjective. IDing faces at airports is one thing; there is a legitimate risk of attack during air travel. I wouldn't agree to this technology being used almost anywhere else.
As long as government facial recognition and tracking doesn't become normalized and spread to other place it may not be so bad. If we start seeing this in shopping centers, and fuel stations, and cameras pointing down from the interstates- then we are truly in the surveillance state.
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As long as government facial recognition and tracking doesn't become normalized and spread to other place it may not be so bad.
Your naivete is quaint.
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As long as government facial recognition and tracking doesn't become normalized and spread to other place it may not be so bad.
Your naivete is quaint.
OK, so if this were limited to just airports and didn't spread, tell me why that would be so bad. I have questions about efficiency; but they're already tracking everyone that flies and everywhere they fly so it's not really eroding more privacy as long as it is JUST at the airports. Comparing your face to your name on your passport- how much different is that from tracking you anyway?
I do have concerns that it will start out here and then they'll decided to put it at bus stations, train stations, down to
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Go ahead and explain my "naivete"
They are already using it at malls up here in the relative middle of nowhere.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]
You Americans (and Brits I might add) are already done like dinner.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/priv... [aclu.org]
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You Americans (and Brits I might add) are already done like dinner.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/priv... [aclu.org]
As bad as that is; it isn't the government, which was the focus of this, it is private enterprise. I definitely don't approve of private companies using facial recognition. ESPECIALLY, if they share it. If the information remains in house that isn't good, if they share it with one another, that's a whole other level of bad.
I can definitely see the appeal to stores of using this.
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As bad as that is; it isn't the government, which was the focus of this, it is private enterprise.
Yes, you keep believing that. The NSA is lagging far behind Walmart.
Re:Bit late to the party (Score:5, Informative)
The CCTV FRT has basically a zero percent success rate.
It's useless to look in a crowd of millions for one of a database of millions. The police basically confirm this on a regular basis.
They would be better off stopping every tenth person, in terms of catching people who might be wanted for "something" or have something they shouldn't have on them.
In terms of "spotting the terrorist in the crowd", it's literally zero arrests over many years of deployment.
Hell, they couldn't even trace the guys they wanted to speak to above the Novichok deaths recently. They had to correlate CCTV with passport data (i.e. look when that guy went through passport control and then pull the footage of that time).
Don't believe the hype about face-recognition.
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The US is really lagging a step behind in their Social Credit System. It seems like not even Trump's executive authority is helping us to catch up. Maybe if he had better advisors, he'd have gait recognition suggested to him. Is the swamp half empty or
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. Is the swamp half empty or half full? Hard to say.
The swamp was partially drained- and then topped back up with radioactive sludge.
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Gah.. no. a few FYIs:
1) The technology to scan with a fairly high degree of accuracy the faces in a crowd has been pretty solid for a decade or so. The limitations are largely around the resolution of the camera and getting any given person in the crowd to look loosely towards the camera while in frame. The former is a technology problem that's not even that hard to solve the days. The latter they have methods (such as forcing you to walk through a choke point to "encourage".
2) Anyone who has traveled inter
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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"Only 3,000 people died on 9/11"?
1. Are you brain dead or has all critical thinking just ceased to exist between your ears?
2. You're comparing a deliberate attack on a civilian population by an enemy to that 30,000 gun deaths in the U.S., 64% of which are suicides? (Gee, the more you know.). You might as well compare 180,000 annual lung cancer deaths to 9/11.
"Bombings and hijackings were relatively common in the 1970s and early 1980s" ?
No. Bombings and hijackings were not common in any way in the 1970s or
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I'm not the OP but:
Depends where you're from.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And: so that's only (quick maths) 10800 gun deaths a year that aren't suicide-related...?
9/11 was a big attack. It was an atrocity. On the scale of atrocities worldwide, over time, even from the 1960's onwards, it really doesn't justify the response that it incurred. It's arguable that the US has killed many more innocent civilians in its response than were killed in the incident itself - they just weren't American, so they don
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So, as your link proved, bombings and hijackings were not common anywhere in the world in the 1970s and early 1980s. You might as well look at the 1990s, because in 1990 there were 6 bombings/hijackings, 10 bombings/hijackings in 1991 and 11 in 1992 -- matching or surpassing most years a decade to two before.
The fact that virtually all the bombings and hijackings during those decades were outside the U.S. and the OP is commenting about 9/11 and U.S. gun deaths exclusively would made the point moot.
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"No. Bombings and hijackings were not common in any way in the 1970s or 1980s."
True. Bombings and hijackings, or terrorism of any kind, have never been very common. They were more common than they are today though.
If you think they're more common today, then you're remembering a few high-profile cases. Some stats:
https://www.datagraver.com/cas... [datagraver.com]
You'll sometimes see graphs of terrorism quite a bit higher in the 2010s, but these include incidents in places like Syria and Iraq as terrorism when previously t
Re:Welcome to reality (Score:5, Informative)
Between 1968 and 1972, there were 130 plane hijackings in the U.S. alone [wired.com], which is more than one per week.
As to bombings, the early 80s had many bombings, many in the Beirut area and Ireland. In the U.S. there were protest bombings. In the 18 months between 1971 and 1972, there were 2,500 documented bombings in this country [time.com]. The deadliest year for underground violence was 1981, when eleven people were killed in bombings and bank robberies gone bad.
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"Only 3,000 people died on 9/11"?
What was it Stalin said?
"1 death is a tragedy, 1 million is a statistic," or something along those lines.
AC seems to think like Stalin.
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For example, in 2017 alone, 16,000 people in the USA died in non-suicide gun deaths. In one year over five times the deaths on 9/11, yet no response from law makers.
In the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, 58 people were killed and 851 were injured - But again, very little response.
If lawmakers were genuinely concerned about making
Lung cancer v 9/11 (Score:4, Insightful)
Not likely. 9/11 was a one-off suicide attack by irrational religious fundamentalists. It probably wasn't even all that preventable.
Out of 180,000 lung cancer deaths a year an estimated 85% are caused by tobacco use. Considering that a simple law outlawing the sale of tobacco could save upwards of 153,000 people a year (that's 51 9/11's a year) from an early death, I would say that lung cancer deaths are much more tragic than 9/11.
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You might as well compare 180,000 annual lung cancer deaths to 9/11.
Not likely. 9/11 was a one-off suicide attack by irrational religious fundamentalists. It probably wasn't even all that preventable.
Out of 180,000 lung cancer deaths a year an estimated 85% are caused by tobacco use. Considering that a simple law outlawing the sale of tobacco could save upwards of 153,000 people a year (that's 51 9/11's a year) from an early death, I would say that lung cancer deaths are much more tragic than 9/11.
I dislike smokers as well... But criminalising tobacco will just create a black market for it. Its an addictive product. Part of the reason smokers are so annoying is that the length they will go to in order to get and defend their fix.
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Yes, some deaths from terrorism and crime are acceptable as the price of privacy and freedom. We can't have freedom and absolute safety.
I'd rather be callous than a trembling COWARD who values life more than the thing that makes life worth living (personal freedom).
9/11 was a blip on the radar as far as death toll. Preventing the next such attack was solved using air marshalls and reinforced flight deck doors. No need to create the infrastructure for a police state as a response.
Re:Welcome to reality (Score:4, Insightful)
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Its not callous to point out our insane response. We have been on a war footing ever since. 3000 lives pales in comparison to the blood spent since 9/11
I'm curious how many we have "killed" in response to that 3,000. I really don't know if we've killed that many or less. Certainly we've impacted millions, some for the better, some for the worse.
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I'm curious how many we have "killed" in response to that 3,000. I really don't know if we've killed that many or less.
You can't be that curious then.
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A true libertarian would fight for the right of a terrorist to one up 9/11. It isn't like they have a conscience.
Not nearly as binary as that (Score:1)
One thing that helps immensely is not pissing off the neighbours. The USA has been very good at pissing off the neighbours, and it's gotten away very well indeed with it for decades with comparatively very little backlash. Compared to what the USA did abroad over the years, even "9/11" was a love-tap. But it was very well done in the sense that it riled up the natives (that's you, 'merkins, you.) wonderfully. To the detriment of rights, freedom, and liberty everywhere. Now that is irony.
I don't condone that
9/11 wasn't that bad. (Score:1)
I'm concerned about - in order:
1. dying from some medical problem because healthcare in this country is luxury. (hundreds of thousands die from that per year)
2. an auto accident because people are shitty drivers and have to text or yammer on their cell phones (tens of thousands)
3. Stress because I have to work 80 hours a week to appear "productive" so that my employer doesn't kick us to the curb and send the jobs overseas.
4. some sexually frustrated who shoots up the place because guns are too easily acquir
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You forgot option 3: realize that the world is far safer than it's ever been and options 1 and 2 are paranoia stemming from hype over rare incidents.
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You forgot option 3: realize that the world is far safer than it's ever been and options 1 and 2 are paranoia stemming from hype over rare incidents.
How much of that is down to intelligence though? If our intelligence communities didn't do such a good job, how many 9/11s would there be?
Re:Welcome to reality (Score:5, Insightful)
The research suggests it's down to improving conditions worldwide. There really isn't a third world anymore, and for the first time in history less than half the people in the world are poor. Improved conditions apply to the developed world as well: most terrorism is domestic.
Police and intelligence are important for heading off the nut jobs that remain, but reducing the number of desperate people with nothing to lose is a more effective strategy in the long run, and doesn't involve police states.
Since the majority of terrorism is domestic, particularly in the US, strong border controls and foreign intelligence doesn't really help much. It's been noted that, going by the numbers, if the US wanted to reduce terrorism by closing their borders, The rest of the US states should close their borders with North Carolina.
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There it is, the unmatched confidence of a Slashdot AC!
Here you are. Ignore that it's a TED talk, they do actually have legit people on occasionally, and Hans Rosling is one of those.
https://www.ted.com/talks/hans... [ted.com]
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I found some websites that have interesting info on poverty. The first one seems to suggest that around the year 2000 less than half the world was in poverty, but the graph stops just short of that. The second one says it plainly that after 2005 it dropped below 50%. I'm looking for more info, as you have to go by whatever their definition of poverty is. I did like the chart that showed dissatisfaction with living conditions, it showed that some "poor" people still had a pretty good life, while other poor f
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If you haven't found it yet, gapminder.org is also good.
The question of satisfaction and happiness and income is interesting. Most research shows that once you reach a certain point, more money doesn't make you happier (and can even make you more unhappy), and it varies tremendously with culture and across individuals. I think the peak for the US was around $60 k/year.
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Oddly, that solution doesn't really work very well. Developing your economy, trading freely with the rest of the world and sending children (especially girls) to school seems to do the trick pretty well though.
IMF World Bank Propagada (Score:1)
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So your objection is that the UN's definition of extreme poverty reflects... extreme poverty?
You can put the line wherever you feel like. Many of the online tools let you do so interactively. Clearly I did as well, since I said 50%, while the $1/day threshold gives about 7% of the world population. Rosling's institute suggests income groups with level 1 (extreme poverty) less than $2/day, and level 2 $8/day (hey, pretty close to the one you suggested!).
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What is your point exactly? I don't think this the fault of "globalism".
This is more likely the fault of imperialism. When one group or another has had enough of another bigger group throwing its weight around, sooner or later the first group is going to get fed up and do something about it. Unfortunately, the way the system is set up, that usually is resorting to violence and guerilla tactics. But the non-guerilla tactics of drones and cruise missiles from fleets hundreds of miles out at sea isn't exactly
This will work (Score:3)
Maga Cap and Oakleys (Score:2)
What a great occasion to don a red Make America Great Cap and some Oakley mirror shades. To complement the outfit perhaps some face mask against the smog / dusty air.
Good luck with face recognitions, Mr. Robot.
NB: Guy Fawkes masks or Halloween masks of current and past presidents aren't such a good idea, they good give the security the idea you're up to no good. One needs to do this in the proper style.
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"Please remove you hat and glasses, sir. "
Now what are you going to do?
Re: Maga Cap and Oakleys (Score:5, Interesting)
So what happens if a US citizen refuses? They can't be denied entry into their own country. And taking that off by force would constitute legal assault and invasion of privacy. Will the courts just wave those because "At the border."
Serious question.
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I'm curious as well, and also curious about the legality of face detection camouflage (which I don't see how they could force you to remove)... https://cvdazzle.com/ [cvdazzle.com]
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An Ice guy I talked to said that they can not refuse a citizen entry, however they can FINE a citizen for entering contrary to the rules.
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I suspect you would be subjected to "additional screening methods". Everything in your luggage would be inspected to ensure it was not purchased abroad and subject to duties, and you would be challenged on all your meds to prove the source/prescription is valid. Your travel documents would be thoroughly scrutinized and every last text/email/tweet/etc. on your phone would be recorded and analyzed. This would continue for every flight thereafter until you agree (submit) to the facial scanning.
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I imagine it would be accompanied by an abrupt end to any sense of entitlement they thought they had as a US citizen.
Honestly, complying seems like a small price to pay to avoid what will likely seem like a living hell that will probably make a person wish they never lived there in the first place. Hope you don't have any connecting flight... oh, and you probably won't ever be allowed to fly ever again either.
Are you sure all that really worth "proving a point"?
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How do you pay your rent/mortgage/ISP/insurance/IRS? You're toast.
You don't need a facebook account to pay your taxes. If you're paying taxes to someone over facebook you're probably being scammed. :p
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How do you pay your rent/mortgage/ISP/insurance/IRS? You're toast.
You don't need a facebook account to pay your taxes. If you're paying taxes to someone over facebook you're probably being scammed. :p
You mean that offer to pay for my taxes over Facebook using iTunes gift cards was a scam? It was recommended to me by my very trustworthy friend who happens to be Nigerian royalty.
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You mean that offer to pay for my taxes over Facebook using iTunes gift cards was a scam? It was recommended to me by my very trustworthy friend who happens to be Nigerian royalty.
Well, if he is Nigerian royalty you can probably trust him. There is no reason Nigerian royalty would lie to you.
Yet another reason ... (Score:2)
I'll take a charter flight from a private airport with no surveillance, on my own schedule. Without having to sh
Get used to it (Score:4, Interesting)
What about Ché Guevarra tee-shirts? (Score:2)
Finally (Score:3)
Count every person entering the USA legally.
Count every person returning to their own nation after stay in the USA.
Match the face with every passport presented and every embassy application to enter the USA.
Try and stay in the USA an an illegal immigrant? Get detected.
Walk around and near any US airport as an illegal immigrant? Get detected.
Use bus, rail, car transport to travel around the USA as an illegal immigrant? Get detected.
Apply for a bank account, rent/buy housing, request any type of gov support, pay tax as an illegal immigrant? Get detected.
Slowly all the fake, shared and re used photo ID used by illegal immigrants will be found and reported.
Airports are just the start.
Expect your bank, CC, landlord, boss, gov to enter public private security partnerships to scan every face they can in real time.
Fake and junk ID won't work when provided to illegal immigrants by a virtue signalling sanctuary city.
Every face will be legal. Every illegal immigrant will slowly be detected as more networks are created nationally to scan every face in every US state and city.
A detailed description of a person's life has to have US citizenship.
Sanctuary city ID is not going to have that connection with needed US citizenship once its wider use is attempted all over the USA
Re:This is only at established "ports of entry" (Score:4, Insightful)
The latter is the bigger problem and in critical need of being addressed by the federal government.
All data indicates that the vast majority of those in the US illegally entered through "authorized ports of entry". Building a wall is like pulling over the car going 60 in a 55 zone while ignoring the car going 100.
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Perhaps, but to continue with the metaphor, the cars that are only doing 60 might be easier to catch.
Maybe so, but to continue the analogy further, to spend billions of dollars "solving" the lesser problem is like the police spending millions of dollars on radar guns that don't read past 65.