More scary: They are just using the information that identifies you, that they already have, and are tying it to your face in a 100% verified way. By which I mean that they now have a database of people’s IDs along with what is most certainly a scan of their face.
Now other companies will offer large amounts of money for this data because they can identify you when you enter stores, walk by things, have your picture online, etc.
This is different to let’s say Facebook because the scans are made at a booth with professional scanning equipment, not some person’s crappy holiday picture with too much backlight.
Also, there is no doubt about who is scanned while on social media you might get on someone’s pictures and Facebook will ask “is this James?” Ehm maybe. Not with delta though.
In a few years you will get extorted for this info bacausenif you don’t let your face get scanned, you can’t fly. Complete distopia.
How do you imagine they aren't scanning your passport and driver's license photos, which you also need to fly/drive, and are also "100% verified" — because they are people's IDs — already anyway?
EDIT: Re: the "quality" of those photos: Because "they" already have the original image that was printed on your license or passport. Images really don't need to be that big or high quality to identifiably determine your facial features.
>How do you imagine they aren't scanning your passport and driver's license photos, which you also need to fly/drive, and are also "100% verified" — because they are people's IDs — already anyway?
DL photos are an extremely specific specification (no smiling, headgear etc) and only 1 angle. Delta could gather a much richer data set with these cameras.
How are they scanning my driver's license photo when they aren't scanning it a machine at all, and even if they did, the photo is not encoded to be digitally read, so they'd just get a relatively low quality image scan.
I would argue that the photo on passports and licence cards, is too small and typically covered with a reflective security logo, to be good enough to extract useful point data for facial recognition.
I'm not talking about scanning your passport when you hand it to the customs agent.
I'm talking about scanning the photo you gave them to make your passport with.
Why, for example, do you think they've started rejecting passport photos where you're wearing glasses, even if you otherwise wear them all of the time?
a. 2D photos are not as valuable
b. They might not be allowed to. This face-scanning 'service' is an agreement between you and Delta, not the government and you.
> "They are just using the information that identifies you, that they already have, and are tying it to your face in a 100% verified way. By which I mean that they now have a database of people’s IDs along with what is most certainly a scan of their face."
They're using your passport number, and either matching that with your passport file photo at the Department of State (for US citizens) or from the immigration entry database (for everyone else). This part's not that sophisticated.
Not to say there's not plenty of things to be concerned about here, but this information has always been readily available on the government's end. It's just the most visible use of it to date.
> has always been readily available on the government's end
Exactly, the government, not some company that is building a database full of personal info connected to proper face-scans. This data is very valuable for advertisers/other ill-willed companies.
Nice to know that we're just barreling ahead towards a cyberpunk future. I've been meaning to get a mohawk anyways. Shame about neon lights dying off though.
More seriously, the amount of security theater going on at airports is getting out of hand. It's obvious that this is intended to start off optional, gradually warm people up to the new norm and then ramp up the data collection.
The airline isn't learning anything from this that it doesn't already know. Flight reservations are decidedly not anonymous, and the TSA already checks photo ID.
Yes, and I fully trust Delta to properly secure my facial recognition data such that the odds of any malicious actor getting such data are negligible. Large old "we are not a tech company" corporations and government agencies are just amazing at that :P
> storing facial [and other data] data in a database.
as long as they are only allowed to use this data to secure flights, and nothing else (including selling it).
Laws against tracking and selling of private data needs to step up in the USA (i would imagine this falls under GDPR, and you'd have to give consent in europe for this to happen).
Yep, and like most things there will likely need to be flagrant abuses and people getting hurt for any significant fraction of voters to even begin caring, let alone vote over it.
>More seriously, the amount of security theater going on at airports is getting out of hand.
it has always been out of hand. most of the security theater actually increases the threat surface of transit, making it easier for anyone with malicious intent to kill many people.
the fact that we have not seen attacks is proof that the terrorism threat is very far overblown... and yet the government needs no more excuses. they have their foot in the door.
welcome to our surveillance dystopia, HN -- you built it even when we warned you this would happen. predictably, nobody will volunteer to clean up the mess they have made.
Anything and everything could give you problems in an American airport. Whether it would work really depends on what recognition algorithms Delta or their affiliates use.
Can you at least read the article before claiming it's about speed? This was a move pushed by the CBP to 'crack down on those who overstay their visas', this data will obviously be collected and stored by the government which should start firing off alarms in anyone's head.
How is that different than the current situation? You still have to present your passport at the airport. It will only change things for people flying with fake passports I guess.
Ok, genuine question. Why should this start firing off alarms in anyone's head?
Because here I am, as a Libertarian/AnCap, and all I can think is: "What, they haven't already been doing this at secure locations for at least a decade?!"
With the amount of corruption I've seen in Africa/third-world, I would not trust any sort of official documentation coming from them. Biometric data allows an entity/government to tie down or verify a person's identity beyond the limitations of human-corruptible identification documents. And the only way to do that is to build a database to cross-reference and detect fraud.
The expanded scale raises concerns - avoiding secure locations that scan your face is less burdensome than refraining from public air travel, and a homeland security-curated traveller face db would have a wider reach than a secure site's records.
You question why "they haven't already been doing this at secure locations for at least a decade."
What is a "secure area", and what is required to make it secure?
I ask because I think it's an overly broad characterization which doesn't distinguish between the different types of security under discussion.
If you think the secure area is the flights, and the level of security you need is the ability to prevent certain types of weapons and explosives from entering the airplane, then what is the need for yet another layer of physical identity checking?
Why is there any need for identity checking? If you are known to have malign intent (but not enough to arrest you), and you don't have any guns, knives, explosives, etc. that can cause problem then why does it matter that we also have automated facial recognition combined with long-term record storage? Bear in mind too that some countries do not require any id for domestic travel, though still do require security checks.
On the other hand, if you think the "secure area" is the US border, then as a libertarian, what is the amount of intrusion that the government should be allowed to do on a US citizen in order to allow that citizen to traverse the border?
As the article points out, last year the TSA's views were 'if you don't like it, don't travel internationally by air.' Can not any border check be justified in the name of security? DNA analysis? Scanning of all data sources you have? Release of your passwords to any servers?
Which "secure area" do you mean, how might it be helped by having this sort of system, and what are the potential downsides?
As a libertarian, how does that change your views with respect to someone who is, say, a Nordic-style democratic socialist and decidedly not not a libertarian?
You’re not an AnCap if you think that third parties have the right to demand my identification by force before allowing me to receive services for which I have already paid.
If requiring identification to the airport "third-party" is part of the terms agreed to by both parties prior to the sale, then I see no problem with it as no force is necessary and everything is done according to what you agreed to initially. Don't want to do that? Fine, don't agree to the sale and then consequently don't fly. That's how it would work if all these entities were fully free-market and not a semi-right granted by government.
Further, it's not "by force" if it's a pre-requisite for being on private property, which would be the proper analogy if you want to discuss this in an AnCap context.
Title is slightly misleading. This is only for for international departures, since it's tied to the passport + immigration databases. It's not for all Delta flights, since domestic flights are excluded.
It's a CBP-operated system called Biometric Exit, and from what I've heard is being rolled out at other airports, including Boston [1], San Jose [2], and Orlando [3]. So it's not exclusive to Delta or ATL... though this might be the largest deployment so far.
It is the law of the land since shortly after 9/11 that CBP is required to have biometric evidence that the person has exited the country. In some airports, the I94 dropbox was literally just a dropbox in the secure area, and there was nothing stopping you from leaving as many I94s as you wanted to there, or even just dropping in yours and leaving.
The fact that CBP is just now bothering to comply with the law should be more alarming.
Global Entry is certainly awkward. Can't tell what the value prop is, now it's so watered down.
Go through a detailed background check and in-person interviews and biometric capture -- then discover at the airport (JFK for example) anyone with the Mobile Passport app on iOS can breeze right through the same global entry lanes, without having to use the Global Entry machines ...
Mobile Passport - Breeze through Customs
The Mobile Passport app speeds you through U.S. Customs and Border Protection at 3 cruise ports and 25 airports.
This app is officially authorized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Update: Tried out Mobile Passport on Sunday at JFK to bypass the Global Entry kiosks, worked a charm.
Spoke to customs officer for the express line handling both, who observed because of commingled lines and no kiosk, MP can indeed get you through quicker.
I'd guess that the vast majority of people who have Global Entry either paid for it using credit card benefits (most travel rewards cards have a Global Entry credit) or have it paid for by their workplace.
There are still marginal benefits of GE over Mobile Passport - more airports have GE, you get expedited service at land borders and at Canadian airports, and you can cut the standard line if the kiosks are broken. My favorite part of GE might be the reciprocal benefits you get in other countries though. For instance, you can sign up with the UK to use their automated border gates which is normally limited to EU citizens only.
Funny, I just applied to global entry. I don’t really care about global entry, what I really meed is tsa precheck since I travel domestically a lot. But global entry already covers precheck and the fees are very similar so I went for it.
Just rode regional Air China flight, they were kind enough to announce at the start of the flight “Please notice, we consider airplanes to be a public space, and for security purposes we may record audio and video during the flight.”
Interestingly enough, that same announcement wasn’t made on the China -> USA leg of the flight. I don’t know about airplanes being a public space, but it’s definitely private property and companies can and do record on their property for all manner of reasons, marketing will be the primary driver I awesome.
What would audio analysis tell an airline about additional products / services they could be selling customers that are currently untapped?
I for one tend to complain about my seat, mainly mumbling to myself, but if I had a offer to move to any open seat for a $20 fee. I’d take it in heart beat.
They generally frown upon you upgrading to a better class. Also, if I had a window and an empty row, I'd be pretty upset if you grabbed the aisle. I couldn't do much about it, but I'd still be pretty upset that you ruined my good thing.
I can’t remember where I saw this burn apparently there is a group of people in the US who called themselves Juggalos or something similar and they where clown make up as they go about their businesses.
It’s common for them to paint their chins black and this affects the ML which assesses your facial proportions throwing it off the scent.
I wonder if it’d be possible to design makeup that’s subtle enough to fool the naked eye but that would alter your facial structure when viewed by a camera? Maybe some type of reflexive make up that might make your irises look much further apart?
There's also the hat that makes it harder for algorithms to recognize you. I wonder if there's a name for dressing up in a fashion that makes it harder for ML to recognize you.
I'm wanting to express a slightly different view from most of the other comments:
My face is not a secret. The photons that bounce off my face in all forward directions are not my property. Anybody is welcome to capture these photons if they come into that person's possession, whether it's a camera on the street of a facial recognition system in an airport.
I'm very concerned about security and expression in our world, but I think we need to notice which things are naturally public (such as the likeness of our face) and which aren't.
Coming from the perspective in security, the one that says biometrics are identity tokens or user names, but not authentication tokens or passwords, the concept you present is reasonable.
However, let’s not simply dispose of the conversation, and leave it at that. There are quite a few more twists and turns right around the next bend...
Which takes a cue from the idea of using tracking pixels, browser fingerprinting and cookies at all. If I visited your website three days ago, and explored a few link paths, would you be so kind as to show me the same website you show to everyone, instead of modifying your website in confusing ways, so as to either extract value from my actions or reduce them to limited options that act against my normal inclinations?
So, with that, a deeper realization starts to develop, that simply “asking people to be nice” within the context of rational facts isn’t good enough. Yes, faces aren’t secret. But the unflinching long term memories of biometric recognition systems, operating with direct connection to systematic business rules as brutal as any cold-blooded algorithmic stock trader, looking at user names like ticker symbols, cannot simply be trusted to be nice.
Normally, when I really a comment, I just upvote. But in this case, I want to take the extra step of telling you directly that this is a truly brilliant comment - great writing and thinking here.
I encourage you to expand this into a full blog post if you haven't already.
Thank you for the kind words. I don’t intend to write articles under any particular name, since it’s too easy to become typecast, and have expectations develop around a name.
I dump my thoughts out in the open, under arbitrary handles, when I think at least one person could use the sound of my voice.
What about the photons that penetrate your clothes and then bounce off your skin? Am I free to capture those and do with them what I wish? What about applying the same to the photons bouncing off your child?
Are photo databases naturally public, e.g. can anyone create a photo database and publish it like wikipedia? How about storing for private use against a public facial recognition cloud service? Do citizens have a right to be forgotten in such a database? Do different countries legal systems, precedent case law and constitutions have the same answers to these questions?
These are good questions, and I only have an answer about which I'm confident to one of these:
> Do citizens have a right to be forgotten in such a database?
No. The idea of a "right to be forgotten" is an effort to manipulate the memories of other people, and that's not a right at all. I have a right to remember you. I have right to tell other people what I remember of you.
This is essential for collective social and political action.
Well, there's a tension between the right to collect/collate/record naturally public things and being concerned about how that info’s being used by others.
Does it seem reasonable to have law enforcement go through your curbside trash for evidence when you're suspected of a crime? How about when a private investigator hired by a competitor in your industry looks for discarded documents? Or when an unfriendly journalist counting how many liquor bottles you've tossed? The trash is naturally public in all those cases.
To play devil's advocate, how do you feel about this statement?
My DNA is not a secret. The traces that shed from my body are not my property. Anybody is welcome to capture these traces if they come into that person's possession, whether it's fallen strand of hair or a DNA profiling system in an airport.
> My DNA is not a secret. The traces that shed from my body are not my property. Anybody is welcome to capture these traces if they come into that person's possession, whether it's fallen strand of hair or a DNA profiling system in an airport.
Umm, yeah, that sounds totally reasonable to me. If I shed cells all over the earth, is every piece of matter that was ever part of me my property in perpetuity? Obviously not. When I excrete or shed or discard, the matter with which I have parted ways becomes in the public domain of nature and subject to whatever exercise the public creatures may desire, from consumption for nutrition to examination for insight.
Sure man, follow me around and grab traces of my DNA is you want. It's none of my business.
Ownership, property, and autonomy are important dimensions in policies that affect privacy, and the concern many people feel comes out of the tension between an individual's interest in restricting what structured data is created regarding themselves and US Customs and Border Patrol interest in generating such structured data.
The Fourth Amendment does not restrict the generation of such structured data which, to my mind, is evidence that a Constitutional Amendment to protect US citizens from governmental surveillance should be written and ratified.
EDIT: add missing direct object at end of 1st paragraph.
Some people don't realize what terrible things are done "in the name of security". I learned about a couple of environmental projects in my country that caused fatal pollution for residents, + ones in the making. And what is the number one official excuse to build them all in such sensitive areas? For security reasons.
Many people blinded by "security". Should be aware of this phenomenon.
Many people believe that human rights are inherent to human beings and we are entitled to those rights in full as a result of our status as humans, not as a result of our birth in a certain place.
Whenever you see a country providing citizens human rights and denying them to non-citizens, that country is morally bankrupt.
Americans also have a right to enter the US without being questioned or something similar. It doesn’t really seem logically considtent to assume that everyone should have the same rights (unless you completely abolish the idea of countries).
You're not saying a different thing here.. even though the parent comment can be read to imply that America has the highest level, they didn't explicitly say so.. </nitpick>
It absolutely is true. The US has the strongest free speech and freedom of association laws in the world. There is no country in the world that has anything that even comes close to the protection offered by the Bill of Rights. The copyright law Europe passed last week would require a constitutional amendment to be legal in the US.
And America doesn't protect an individual's right to privacy, unlike the EU and Japan which have strong legislation to protect individuals. And when it comes to protections from police, America is the absolute worst within what could be considered the first world.
You can pick and choose rights that are important to you and say America is number one. Others can say America is positively lacking in other important aspects. It can easily be argued that America isn't even the best when it comes to protecting freedom of speech, and it's evident with how American-run tech corps police what's permitted on their sites to fit with American laws.
Personally, I found America to be too constricting and the police state overwhelming, and I left for somewhere with more freedom. :)
The idea that an individual has a high expectation of privacy in public spaces is neither a right nor a freedom, it’s simply a restriction on what you’re legally allowed to do in public. It is freedom exchanged for safety.
There is also no argument to be made at all when it comes to speech. America has by far the most extensive and thorough protections for expression and association in the world.
Individuals in America also have much more protection from police interference than in any other country. The 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th amendments all protect individuals against malicious police actions and prosecutions. There is simply no other country that has anything remotely close to the Bill of Rights.
That is a very American comment. I, as a European, really have to disagree completely. I have yet to see any cases in which anywhere in Europe free speech is limited. Or association, in fact there is party litterally called The Party that got elected last time around into the European Parliament. That party is an off-shoot of a German satirical magazine. And the last time a political party was prohibited in Germany was the communist party in the 50s.
Racist speech that is legal in America is prohibited in Germany.
Additionally, many video games have had to release versions with reduced blood and gore in Germany, due to laws prohibiting the uncensored original versions.
France is even more awesome: Gayssot Act makes it illegal to question the existence of crimes against humanity as defined in the London Charter. Let that sink in - it is illegal to question.
So, same logic as above for the holocaust. Once it is established that a certain crimw against humanity happen that cannot be denied. Free speech, i my own European way of thinking, has to protected against propaganda. Which the French do, apparently.
It is all in the eye of the beholder: see the Mari Le Pen charges. But I'm sure it is fantastic to pretend that it is done not for maintenance of the status quo but for some other, much more glorious reasons.
And what reason woulf that be? I thought about all that, and where it might seem that European law has the tendency to limit free speech in certain fields (that don't really matter in everday life and if they do for an individual it tells a lot). On the other hand there is nothing comparable to, say, the Patriot Act. So the individual privacy and rights are, it seems, more protected than in the US.
But I'm diverting, the starting was a comment stating that the US are having superiour rights in that regard in general. Which is, IMHO, not true and to generalized without concrete examples. Now we do have examples and everbody can make up their own mind.
I think about this sometimes when I hear a friend talk about being ordered to tear down his treehouse, or notice my barber's cosmetology license by the mirror while he cuts my hair, or see a news story about a child's lemonade stand receiving a citation.
If you want to measure a persons rights, or lack thereof, by their interactions with regulations and bureaucracy, then it’s only fair to compare the US to other developed countries, where it would mostly compare quite favorably.
The US would compare somewhat poorly to Hong Kong in terms of regulatory overhead for example, but Hong Kong only allows certain political parties to exist, so they’re clearly not going to be winning any civil liberties competitions.
The US would potentially also compare quite poorly to many developing countries in this regard. But that’s because the mechanism that keeps regulation and bureaucracy in check in the developing world is rampant corruption and state sanctioned labor exploitation. Again, not something you’d want a respectable country to emulate.
How does the technology, false negative and false positive rare compare to Apple Face ID? How quickly will the system hardware, firmware and software be upgraded in response to vulnerability testing and reports? Will there be security bounties and legal shields for white hats who can perform security tests?
Maybe I've been asleep for the past few decades, but when did it become vogue to implement corporate Stasi-like surveillance infrastructure?
I keep seeing the sentiment pop-up that as long as it isn't the government building the dossier directly, everything is a-ok.
Regardless of the fact that most nations have begun ignoring any claim of privacy being at stake by mere virtue of doing business with someone else.
The lack of follow-thru on the sentiment, and the danger it poses to far more fundamental societal building blocks (good treatment of guests and strangers, trust, forgiveness, willingness to live and let live on an individual basis).
Seems like someone's driving out on some pretty thin ice with one heavily laden forklift.
Nevermind the behavior grossly violating classic human social norms. If I went to someone's door, and started rifling through their house and person to build up a dossier on them, before even bothering to say "hello", I'd likely be shot (not that I would blame them). Same thing if I made the presumption I could do it in a public space for my own self-enrichment (again, would not blame them).
I'm a bit of a stickler for privacy in that regard. If you want info for your own edification, that's fine. If you start sharing it without my informed consent, free of such compulsions as "every actor in this sphere is doing it", I've got issues with that. Especially if a State actor is one of the beneficiaries, directly or indirectly. It's a really bad door to open that I'd prefer stayed where it belongs. In the history books.
>Delta said that travelers who don’t want their faces will be given several opportunities to opt-out, Delta spokesperson Kathryn Steele told TechCrunch, and can continue to “proceed normally” through security.
>CBP spokesperson Jennifer Gabris said that only US citizens can opt out, and will have their documents checked manually.
>Homeland Security, which oversees border security, struck a different tone when last year it said that anyone who wanted to opt out of having their faces scanned should “refrain from traveling.”
To one-up themselves, perhaps Delta could also scan faces immediately upon arrival, with a focus on sentiment analysis to get an idea as to how satisfied their customers are at the end of the trip?
Then you're dealing with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of sentiment analysis in face-scanning: person may have been pretty happy, until they noticed you face-scanning the people ahead in line.
Hah, that's funny. As an anecdote, I was having a nice trip back from holidays when a security guard body-searched my then 2-year-old kid at Amsterdam airport on arrival. The shock-realization of what sort of society we've become threw me off the track.
Aside from the privacy concerns, what happens when it doesn’t work — when it doesn’t identify my face due to problems in the sw or my face is too similar to someone else. What happens?
They've just (last year or so) started doing this for chinese citizens when boarding trains. They place their ID card and ticket on a scanner thing and look into the camera to let them into the terminal. When you check into a hotel, get a visa within china, or make some larger purchases like residential internet, they also take your picture. I've also seen it being used for smaller payments (ie at institution canteens or through alipay at KFC), but that's still not too widespread or mandatory.
As another posted noted they're also running facial recognition on security cameras for "public safety" and there's some propaganda about them finding a wanted criminal in the crowd at a concert and arresting him there using this tech. But I think a lot of the time there's too much bureaucracy to get this system to run efficiently unless the scope is within a certain, limited area (like Xinjiang) or a major crime was committed.
Now other companies will offer large amounts of money for this data because they can identify you when you enter stores, walk by things, have your picture online, etc.
This is different to let’s say Facebook because the scans are made at a booth with professional scanning equipment, not some person’s crappy holiday picture with too much backlight.
Also, there is no doubt about who is scanned while on social media you might get on someone’s pictures and Facebook will ask “is this James?” Ehm maybe. Not with delta though.
In a few years you will get extorted for this info bacausenif you don’t let your face get scanned, you can’t fly. Complete distopia.