TSA Expands Controversial Facial Recognition Program (cbsnews.com) 70
SonicSpike shares a report from CBS News: As possible record-setting crowds fill airports nationwide, passengers may encounter new technology at the security line. At 25 airports in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, the TSA is expanding a controversial digital identification program that uses facial recognition. This comes as the TSA and other divisions of Homeland Security are under pressure from lawmakers to update technology and cybersecurity. "We view this as better for security, much more efficient, because the image capture is fast and you'll save several seconds, if not a minute," said TSA Administrator David Pekoske.
At the world's busiest airport in Atlanta, the TSA checkpoint uses a facial recognition camera system to compare a flyer's face to the picture on their ID in seconds. If there's not a match, the TSA officer is alerted for further review. "Facial recognition, first and foremost, is much, much more accurate," Pekoske said. "And we've tested this extensively. So we know that it brings the accuracy level close to 100% from mid-80% with just a human looking at a facial match." The program has been rolled out to more than two dozen airports nationwide since 2020 and the TSA plans to add the technology, which is currently voluntary for flyers, to at least three more airports by the end of the year. There are skeptics. Five U.S. senators sent a letter demanding that TSA halt the program.
At the world's busiest airport in Atlanta, the TSA checkpoint uses a facial recognition camera system to compare a flyer's face to the picture on their ID in seconds. If there's not a match, the TSA officer is alerted for further review. "Facial recognition, first and foremost, is much, much more accurate," Pekoske said. "And we've tested this extensively. So we know that it brings the accuracy level close to 100% from mid-80% with just a human looking at a facial match." The program has been rolled out to more than two dozen airports nationwide since 2020 and the TSA plans to add the technology, which is currently voluntary for flyers, to at least three more airports by the end of the year. There are skeptics. Five U.S. senators sent a letter demanding that TSA halt the program.
Republicans want to reduce spending (Score:5, Insightful)
Here you go. A perfect example of where billions can be cut. An unnecessary, bloated government program which serves no useful purpose. Even their own inspectors admit the TSA misses up to 95% of all fake bombs and explosives used in test scenarios.
Last I heard, a 95% failure rate is just that. A failure.
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From the story:
" 'So we know that it brings the accuracy level close to 100% from mid-80% with just a human looking at a facial match.' "
So we can much better find an ID mismatch. But that does not help with the psychological part of screening: looking for fidgety, unusual acting people, asking questions, which has proved very effective at finding drug traffickers.
Re:Republicans want to reduce spending (Score:4, Interesting)
This kind of system always has two types of errors: type I (false positive, in this case accepting a wrong face as belonging to the identity) and type II (false negative, in this case rejecting the real person's face as a match). Most of the easy ways to reduce the rate of either error type increase the other. Giving only one error rate hides the important differences between these two kinds of errors and how that trade-off is being handled.
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People making this statement are idiots with no science background. Just another symptom of kakistocracy.
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Assuming arguendo that they were using that definition of "accuracy" rather than another technical [wikipedia.org] definition or a non-technical definition, that totally misses the point.
Almost all ID-checking encounters at airports (rather than, say, bars) are honest people: the TP and FN cases. One trivial way to get to almost 100% binary-classification accuracy in such a situation -- at least in a trial, where a more honest method is being used as a comparison/backstop -- is to always say "positive". Of course, doing
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I see. Well, perhaps they're using AI and it's real.
How does this not help? (Score:1)
So we can much better find an ID mismatch. But that does not help with the psychological part of screening: looking for fidgety, unusual acting people,
Why not? It seems like in fact AI would be much better at this, because it can monitor every person every second they are in the airport.
asking questions
Let's say for a second it can't do that even though eventually it will, all that has to happen is the AI calls out a person for review by an agent using the same flagging as if the ID did not match, then the
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The way it works is a TSA agent engages a person in smalltalk, or they ask innocuous sounding questions, the sort of interactions an AI cannot do.
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The way it works is a TSA agent engages a person in smalltalk, or they ask innocuous sounding questions, the sort of interactions an AI cannot do.
Eliza: Can you elaborate on that? :-)
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Saw a TV show of them doing this. They're pretty good at finding the liars. But then, drug dealers work on big margins.
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The TSA is using facial recognition on bombs and explosives? Those bastards!!
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Ron "I love surveillance if it's targeting plebes" Johnson, and many other Republicans, will gladly scream "SOFFF ON TERRIR!!!" at opponents who want to reign in government surveillance and security theater. After all they know 99% of their base, despite b
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Also note I didn't absolve the democratic party at all. I'll give a pass to Russ Feingold, because he called it BS,
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What is the controversy here?
I can't recall a time where it was permissible to board a commercial airliner anonymously. Not sure when the FAA started insisting on passenger manifests but its not exactly new and there are good reasons for it.
Look I am all for people being about to move about domestically freely. I absolutely think you should be able to buy a bus or train ticket for cash and if you ID is checked or isn't should be up to the transport company but.. we know the risks where it comes to weaponizi
Re:Republicans want to reduce spending (Score:4, Informative)
I can't recall a time where it was permissible to board a commercial airliner anonymously. Not sure when the FAA started insisting on passenger manifests but its not exactly new and there are good reasons for it.
You are clearly a youngster. Yes, even in the 60s and 70s airline tickets had names on them, but there was no ID check of any kind. In fact, the director of the SkunkWorks (per the book he wrote) bought tickets to Europe under the name "Ben Dover" to avoid public knowledge of his travel.
The original intent, and only justification for, passenger manifests was to be able to alert family members in case of a crash.
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True I was to young in the 70s to be buying my own plane tickets -or- really anything.
Either way I certainly can't recall a time in the 90s where you were getting on a plane with out some ID checking going on; at least not unless you were a child. Certainly after Pan Am 103, if not before things started to tighten up quite a bit.
I simply come back to - if we are going to do security it should be better than theater. If we *need* the security or not is a separate conversation. If the requirement that was set
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I recall flying in the late 90s, possibly even 2000, where I walked up to security with my ticket and went through the metal detector. No ID required.
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The only person who has consistently voted against the patriot act has been Bernie Sanders. Maybe Rand Paul as well but he votes just to look like a contrary asshole.
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Rand Paul is one of the few politicians that voted consistent with his beliefs (and seems to actually have beliefs.)
They are different then your beliefs but he's not doing it to be a contrary asshole.
I don't agree with Bernie Sanders on much, but do recognize that he is pretty consistent with his values.
They both vote on what they think is right versus what their party tells them is right.
Re:Republicans want to reduce spending (Score:4, Insightful)
The same Republicans who (performatively) complain about surveillance and yet magically vote for surveillance every single time? To be fair they only want the plebes under surveillance. They also have their status as legislators to get them by security.
Ron "I love surveillance if it's targeting plebes" Johnson, and many other Republicans, will gladly scream "SOFFF ON TERRIR!!!" at opponents who want to reign in government surveillance and security theater. After all they know 99% of their base, despite being such rough and tumble individualists, is a bunch of bed wetters living in terminal fear of the world. Add in a bunch of people who have no idea of how pointless such theater is today, but think it's probably a good idea from what Fox has said.
So for Republican politicians it's a non-issue.
Your neurotransmitter hit from binaristic thinking limits your ability to improve the situation.
A huge portion of the Republican and conservatives base hates the TSA and would love to see the agency eliminated. Instead of just seeing another opportunity to rail against people in an Us/Them binary, look for opportunities to make common cause in areas you do overlap with others. Overlaps do exist, but entrenched social/commercial/financial systems are working hard to keep us focused on Othering people. Divide and conquer is one of the oldest and most effective strategies in human history.
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A huge portion of the Republican and conservatives base hates the TSA and would love to see the agency eliminated
Where is the evidence for this? Was this part of the negotiations of the debt limit?
I suspect that many, if not most GOP voters are in denial about what "their" party actually supports.
So where are Democrats pressing for this? (Score:2)
You are trying to make this some Republican issue - so you are claiming they are the ones stopping the TSA from being removed...
But where is more than one or two Democrats calling for the removal of the TSA? The president could do it, yet here we have face scanners going in under his watch.
Why are you making this a partisan issue when plainly all of the government class badly wants a massive security state apparatus spying on you.
Wake up and smell the Libertarianism man.
you'll save several seconds (Score:1)
you'll save several seconds, if not a minute,
Oh great, now i will not miss my flights /s
Re:Use facial recognition on the entire airport (Score:5, Insightful)
It's almost as if you believe airports are full of terrorists, and that aircraft are the only place they can possibly get you.
Fact 1: Terrorists can do their thing outside of airports ... or even in the lines of people waiting to pass through airport security. What do you think the effect of a dozen simultaneous nail bombs in airport security lines across the country would be?
Fact 2: The only thing the TSA has really done to improve security is to lock the cockpit doors on the aircraft.
Ref: https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Conclusion: There simply aren't many terrorists in the world.
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I always wonder why terrorist don't target the waiting lines at airports. That would probably do more impact then a plane now that the cockpits are locked.
My takeaway is this isn't a real problem and was a diversionary reaction to 9/11 to take away attention on the failures from both Bush and Clinton to stop this plot before it hit the airports.
When you go online to find error rates (Score:2)
And of course the TSA is would never lie and they are well known for their transparency and willingness to admit mistakes. It will all deploy seamlessly and no one will ever get stranded in an airport and have their trip turned into a Kafkaesque nightmar
I seriously doubt it (Score:3)
Google and Apple's photo apps still can't tell the difference between gorillas and blacks:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/0... [nytimes.com]
https://www.wired.com/story/wh... [wired.com]
If the TSA can, I'm sure both of these billion dollar companies would pay quite a lot to license the technology, and pay even more for an exclusive license.
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That's no doubt a real problem in some contexts, but how many gorillas have you seen going through the TSA line?
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Google and Apple's photo apps still can't tell the difference between gorillas and blacks:
What about gorilla faces? LOL
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The search space is a lot lower for the airports. I've only seen this used for international flights, so they already have a set of passport images for everyone who's supposed to be on the flight. They only have to compare against that set. It's similar to Global Entry, where they already have photos of everyone arriving so can just compare against that set.
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You just pointed out that Pekoske doesn't know how to use a search engine. But I guess his job requires wanton ignorance in order to remain employed.
"We view this as better for security, much more efficient, because the image capture is fast and you'll save several seconds, if not a minute," said TSA Administrator David Pekoske.
Wow! All this to shave off a few seconds if not a minute! HELL Yes! Let's do it! Assuming
Controversial for Americans (Score:2)
This looks and feels the same system being used to allow non-American citizens to enter the country, found at multiple international ports of entry, since many years ago. Surprised the volume of people coming in every day from all over the world did not adequately trained the American version of the system enough for what apparently seems to be an issue with a very ugly face.
TSA Expands Controversial Facial Recognition Progr (Score:1)
Sounds great, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds great. TSA agent points the gadget at my ID and pushes a button, points the gadget at me and pushes another button, either it goes "baBEEP" and I get right through, or it goes "BEEPBEEPBEEP" and the TSA agent squints at me and my ID like a bouncer carding me at a club show, then, presuming the two are a match, waves me through.
...but I get the feeling it's not going to work out that way. It's probably going to be something more like:
TSA agent points the gadget at my ID and pushes a button. Resulting photo is stored forever on a database. TSA points the gadget at me. Pushes the wrong button, cancelling the whole operation and clearing the picture of my ID from the gadget's memory. TSA agent looks confused, then points the gadget at me again and pushes the right button. Resulting photo is stored forever on a database. Except there's no picture of my ID in the gadget's memory so everything just sort of hangs. It takes ten minutes for the TSA agent to find a supervisor who can reset the unit. Supervisor resets the unit, points the gadget at my ID and pushes a button, then, clearly in a hurry, waves the gadget up in the general direction of my face and pushes another button, capturing a blurry photo of the right side of my face and the wall behind me. It goes BEEPBEEPBEEP because the supervisor took a shitty picture, but even if it had been pointed in the right direction it would have gone off, because the individual hairs on my head and blemishes on my face are not a 1:1 match with the picture the DMV took of me in mid-sneeze five years ago. The TSA agent grabs me and I am led to a small unfurnished office to wait for two hours while they decide whether I look like my ID or not. No matter how they decide, they end up spending two more hours interrogating me about the middle names of various distant relatives I've never even heard of, let alone met. After they're finished interrogating me, no matter how it goes, they stick their fingers up my butt. This whole time my baggage has been subject to "enhanced search procedures", which basically means to break everything with a hammer before putting it in the cargo hold of a random plane and telling me it's been lost.
By the time I find myself back home - tired, sore, and bereft of baggage; the TSA database has been hacked and the picture of my ID has been used in no less than three separate crimes. Wearily, I drag myself out to go use a neighbor's phone, since mine is now a very fine powder coating the floor of TSA's baggage search area. As soon as I leave my front door I'm teargassed by a SWAT team because the blurry photo the TSA agent's supervisor took of my right cheek and the wall happened to pop a match in the Extremely Dangerous and Incredibly Armed Fugitive Terrorist Super Bad Guy database.
Because we all must be vigilant against TERRISM.
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The TSA is not needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Sit down.
Shut up.
Listen to the cabin crew / pilots.
Odds are you'll live through the ordeal.
That's exactly what Al Qaeda was counting on when they conducted their attack. People seem to forget that they did it all on ONE DAY. No attack since then has followed a similar profile. Do you know why?
Allow me to say this for the cheap seats of Republican bed wetters and other people living in fear of this, or anything similar, happening again:
NOBODY EXCEPT FOR SMALL CHILDREN OR THE EXTREMELY ELDERLY WILL EVER SIT STILL DURING A HIJACKING OR OTHER AIR ATTACK.
REPEAT: NOBODY WILL SIT STILL AGAIN... EVER... NO MATTER HOW YOU THREATEN THEM THEY WILL TRY TO KILL TERRORISTS.
That's right. Look at the resultant actions of passengers towards terrorists since then... most should consider themselves lucky to be breathing afterwards. You could take away the TSA today, and nothing would happen. Why? The old rules are gone, and the terrorists know it. There will never be another successful hijacking of a passenger plane ever again. No, not ever. Passengers will kill the terrorists or die trying. You can't put enough terrorists on a plane to hold it long enough for an attack, or anything else for that matter. The passengers are more numerous, and will die trying to overpower the terrorists. Why shouldn't they try to kill the terrorists? They're dead if the terrorists win, but they might live if they take the terrorists down.
Let's ditch the security theater and have a nice day.
Re: The TSA is not needed (Score:2)
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We also locked the cockpit door and will refuse to open it.
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Here's the data that challenges your claim (Score:3, Interesting)
Enjoy!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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There will never be another successful hijacking of a passenger plane ever again.
If you had qualified that statement by adding, "in the US" and changed "ever again" to "for a long time" I'd be inclined to agree. In reality, there have been a number of successful hijackings since 9/11 [usatoday.com], but none in the US. The article credits increased airport security rather than increased passenger unwillingness to sit idly by for the overall decline in hijacking attempts, but that appears to be editorial opinion.
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A male passenger grabbed the flight controls of a Ryan Air Services Cessna 208 Caravan on approach to Aniak Airport after a scheduled flight from Bethel Airport in Alaska carrying a single pilot and four other passengers. The man briefly placed the aircraft in a nosedive at low altitude before being pushed away by the pilot and restrained by other passengers. The pilot regained control and landed the aircraft safely; no injuries were reported. The man was arrested by Alaska State Troopers and admitted that his actions were an attempted murder-suicide. He was charged with several counts of assault, attempted assault, and making terroristic threats, and may face federal charges.
They paper's opinion is bollocks. I wonder if they think they have a lot of TSA scanning in small places like Bethel? If they do, well, I've got some news for them as the last time I saw the place they didn't have a metal detecting wand.
The airlines should be responsible for security. (Score:3, Insightful)
If airport security were the responsibility of the airlines themselves, lawsuits, or the threat of them, would balance things out a little more. But no. We have this instead, misbehavior shielded by a sovereign immunity legal black hole that nobody can do anything about.
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Conservatives always claim government can't do anything right, you have to starve the beast and all that - so why did nobody object when they formed a new bloated federal agency, the TSA? Why should our tax money pay for an airline's operating expense?
So they could staff it with cronies and hire people as political favors. Not to mention all the sweet contracts for equipment that their buddies can non compete bid on. Scanners, metal detectors, uniforms, you name it.
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I think most conservatives would prefer the TSA went away.
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Probably works as well as the lint roller (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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....there's no such thing as privacy in public. Simple as that. Walking through an airport is a public space.
That's not the point. The point is that they shouldn't have the facial database in the first place.
(...where did they even get it from?)
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You sidestepped the real question - should the TSA have that database?
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This is where they got it. They're building the database right fucking now, using these scanners. Participating in this shit is just speeding the dystopian nightmare the government wants to be.
It's voluntary, so stop giving up your privacy and security to get through their theater parade faster. Decline to use the Face ID s
SOP for Federal TLAs, usual SNAFU (Score:2)
"We view this as better for security, much more efficient, because the image capture is fast and you'll save several seconds, if not a minute," said TSA Administrator David Pekoske.
THIS JUST IN-- federal bureaucratic agency expands its bureaucracy and control/surveillance/gatekeeping powers in order to solve the inefficiencies caused by the federal bureaucratic agency's previous expansion of control/surveillance/gatekeeping powers. We can all feel relieved that the problem is now solved and there will not simply be justification of another expansion 5 years and 5 trillion dollars from now.
My Opinion. (Score:2)
Complaining about what? (Score:2)
I don't like to yell, but this is needed due to the volume of people who have no clue what they are talking about, but are actively complaining anyway. It's like they thought Minority Report was a film about current events and are reacting to the headline.
THIS ISN'T REAL-TIME, "WALKING BY A VIDEO CAMERA AND IDENTIFYING FROM VAST DATABASE" FACIAL RECOGNITION. THIS IS "LINE UP YOUR HEAD TO THE OUTLINE AND TAKE A PHOTO SO WE CAN COMPARE IT TO YOUR ID PHOTO" FACIAL RECOGNITION.
The video facial recognition has s
Re: Complaining about what? (Score:3)
Why is this the photo you object to, and not the others? Your information and your photo were already in the database long before you got to the airport.
What planet have you been living on where people haven't also objected to the others?
One more photo is one more opportunity for a potentially life-ruining false positive. Just because the lake's already polluted doesn't mean it's fine to be dumping more filth in.
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What planet do you live on that anyone rational wants no video cameras at airports? I don't want to fly commercially in that world, and personally don't know anyone who thinks that is anywhere close to a good idea. The only people who complained are the "privacy at all costs" people. and they wouldn't fly commercial since you need to be identified and logged to do so. You don't change an industry based on the objections of people who, while being very vocal, will never be customers.
You were the one I was ye
Re: Complaining about what? (Score:2)
The fact that you see someone complaining about "false positives" and devote the majority of your response to debunking the worry of false positives in the initial scan rather than the worry of future false positives with criminal databases indicates you're either extremely stupid or extremely disingenuous.
Even if they were comparing it against a database of "terrorists", and you happened to look like one, they would've already matched your ID picture years ago. They already know who is close.
I guess on whichever you're on, every single photographic scan of the same source material is digitally identical, and, even more interestingly, every single photograph of someone's face is digitally iden
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That last paragraph is dizzingly stupid as a reply to what I actually wrote. You simply applyed every bad situation you could dream of related to "image recognition" to this situation, regardless of the facts or technical feasibility, to a specific situation that doesn't do any of that, and then blamed ME for promoting the ridiculous bullshit you just spouted. Unfortunately for that tactic, I actually stated specifically why people like you are wrong and gave detailed explanations in previous posts, so that
Failure. (Score:1)