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DHS Goes Biometric, Says Travelers Can Opt Out of Face Scans by Not Traveling
- nathanaldensr 9y agoDespite the misleading title, this only applies to "nonimmigrant foreigners." The title leads one to believe it applies to all travelers. In my opinion, any country's executive power should have the right to restrict such travel for any and all reasons. In the United States, the executive branch has that specific authority.
- johnnyg 9y agoFirst they took the "nonimmigrant foreigners" and so I did nothing.
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- yjftsjthsd-h 9y agoSlippery slope argument works better when the things you're comparing are similar. A country having different rules for citizens and non-citizens is perfectly reasonable.
- KirinDave 9y agoIf only you had read the article you'd see that it's precisely the impact on citizens that is the primary objection raised. I get that you have a political agenda but I wish you could at least soldier through the article before deciding to discard it purely to avoid potential cognitive dissonance.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y agoAlright, you got me: I responded to a comment without reading the article. Having now read the fear-mongering article myself, I'm far more confident in my position. They're collecting info on non-citizens, like I said. Since you can't tell whether somebody's a citizen without doing the scan, they do the next best thing and discard citizens' data after the fact. Yes, they don't rule out watching everyone later, and we should fight that, but that's not what's happening now. > I get that you have a political agenda Not everyone who disagrees with you is a shill, and personal attacks remain unconvincing. > but I wish you could at least soldier through the article before deciding to discard it purely to avoid potential cognitive dissonance. Like the dissonance needed to yell about something the government isn't actually doing and ignoring the obvious attempts to be reasonable (throwing out citizens' data, making sure they properly figure out privacy before proceeding)? If you read the article without bias it's not really alarming; it's an agency trying to do its job and even trying to minimize privacy issues for citizens.
- KirinDave 9y agoYou didn't read the article, you leapt to a conclusion you like. You then didn't read it again, but said you did. Goodbye.
- lukeqsee 9y agoJohn Wagner explicitly said, "However, [he] doesn’t rule out CBP keeping [US citizens' photos] in the future after going 'through the appropriate privacy reviews and approvals.'" That threat is enough to disturb me.
- hellbanner 9y agoYeah, it's a bullshit argument. "We won't do this, unless "appropirate procedures"" ... guess what, they define appropriate procedures. So if interviewed by Congress, or newscasters, or anyone, they'll say "We follow appropriate procedures" all day long and never reveal exactly how those procedures work.
- privong 9y ago> Despite the misleading title, this only applies to "nonimmigrant foreigners." The title leads one to believe it applies to all travelers. The article body specifically disagrees with you: "Now, the DHS is going to be scanning everyone's faces as they board/disembark international flights.". Because they're doing it at disembarking rather than passport control, it will necessarily include all travelers. DHS claims they will later discard US citizen's images ("The DHS swears it won't be retaining face scans of US persons, but apparently never considered limiting the collection to foreign travelers. Instead, the DHS will "collect them all" and supposedly toss out US citizens' scans later."). But in order to identify those people they will still have to do the facial recognition and so will need to have image information on the citizens already. So if you're a US citizen, they'll either identify you via comparison with other data or leave you in the database of scanned information because they could not positively identify you as a US citizen. So indeed it applies to all travelers in some form.
- flareback 9y agofta: John Wagner, the Customs deputy executive assistant commissioner in charge of the program, confirmed in an interview that U.S. citizens departing on international flights will submit to face scans. So everyone will be scanned. They just say that they will delete the US citizen scans after 14 days. I'm sure they have backups though, will they be deleting those as well?
- KirinDave 9y agoUm, so... Did you read the article? The entire second half is about how the claims that citizens will be caught up in this and that the claims if data deletion are: 1. Unverifiable. 2. Immediately hedged by speech that suggests a long term change in policy. 3. Difficult to establish anyways. Your opinions of the Executive branch are entirely immaterial to this discussion (and it's telling that you think they are germane), this is about data collection on citizens. Any plan to mandate bulk data collection on international travel must address the impact on citizens in a legal way.
- kabdib 9y agoWithin the US, there is a right to travel. US courts have held that while international travel can be restricted, there must be due process involved. For instance, there's case law that forbade the president from preventing international travel by members of the Communist party.
- lukeqsee 9y agoWith Global Entry and Precheck (which required partial fingerprinting), I mostly avoid the hassles of the US security theater. However, I'm looking at greatly increasing international flights (mostly in and out of the USA), and this is a ridiculous invasion. With the advent of Clear (the retina-based alternative to Precheck, seemingly a harbinger of this DHS decision), I wonder how long until most of the frequent travelers willing submit all of their biometrics for a smoother and simpler travel experience.
- sseveran 9y agoWhile I have GE (I would have a Clear if I flew more) my intelligence still feels insulted every time I travel. I pay a fee to the TSA every time I travel. I paid again to get the GE which is because the fee they charge me apparently doesn't cover an adequate number of screeners to ensure a quick trip through security. All this hassle and expense and I am pretty sure that they are unable to perform their job. http://www.nbcnews.com/business/travel/new-tsa-chief-vows-improve-96-failure-rate-weapons-detection-n401011 http://www.nbcnews.com/business/travel/new-tsa-chief-vows-im...
- edward 9y agoAmerican bioethicist Jacob M. Appel has argued that "treating human beings differently, simply because they were born on the opposite side of a national boundary," is inherently unethical. According to Appel, such "birthrights" are only defensible if they serve "useful and meaningful social purposes" (such as inheritance rights, which encourage mothers and fathers to work and save for their children), but the "birthright of nationality" does not do so. Economist and writer Philippe Legrain argues that the countries of the world need migration to help global trade and reduce the occurrence of regional wars. Open borders cannot be dismissed as a utopian idea, argues Harald Bauder, because they do not propose an alternative way to organize human society but rather are a critique of closed or controlled borders. Restrictions on mobility can only be justified if it can be shown that those restrictions prevent significant harm. Since research indicates that open borders will be better for both the natives and the migrants, and at the very least have not been shown to cause major harm, those restrictions are unjustified. Free migration is the most effective way to reduce world poverty. Migrants from developing countries can earn higher wages after moving to a more developed country, usually lifting them from 'developing world poverty' to 'developed world poverty'. They also send remittances to relatives in their home country, the flow of remittances being estimated to be around three times the global foreign aid spending reported by the OECD. A literature summary by economist Michael Clemens leads to an estimate that open borders would result in an increase of 67-147% in GWP (gross world product), with a median estimate of a doubling of world GDP. From a human rights perspective, free migration may be seen to complement Article 13 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights: (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
- mc32 9y agoWhat would prevent a tragedy of the commons-like effect where en-masse people migrate from one place to a new one, deplete it, move to new pasture, deplete, move to new pasture, asf? When you sleep in the same place you shit you take care of it better, or suffer the consequences of squalor. Regulation against pollution, water quality, land use, acceptable norms, etc. With open systems, no longer the state but but corporate entities would weild power. I'm not sure that is a well thought out argument. Nevermind that this would lead to a coalescing toward culture of China and the West dominating everywhere. Not generally what progressives seek as an endgame. Moreover, the trend is to split further. See Pakistan, India Bangladesh. They used to be one country but split. Costa Rica, panama, Mexico used to be one place, but split up, former USSR split up. They want to self agglomerate, go ahead. Do it, you share culture, values, language, but instead they split up. The proposal would result in a different kind if colonialism not too dissimilar from the Dutch east India co where corporate entities wielded enormous power but this would be worldwide.
- Tharkun 9y agoI suppose we can all opt out of the surveillance state by not staying alive?
- whatnotests 9y agoZoom, bang! Straight to the endgame!
- jksmith 9y agoBut who would pay for DHS? The means have become the ends.
- Zigurd 9y agoThis would get resolved quickly if face recognition were democratized: Is the public official ordering you around a known asshole? What's his Yelp rating? Suddenly, privacy would become a thing.
- Tharkun 9y agoFunny how things don't seem to work that way. What with police officers arresting people who film them. Somehow privacy has become a privege.
- csense 9y agoWhat's the end-game of the war on terror? What victory condition do we need to achieve to get terrorists to stop attempting massacres, so we can unwind these security measures?
- mmirate 9y agoOh, that's the beauty of it all. There is no end. No end to the war, and thus no end to the profitability of the U.S.'s contracted armament/defense manufacturers. And no end to the citizens' willingness to trade away their essential freedoms for a feeling of safety.
- avckp 9y agoI probably will never visit USA. I am only worried as this might set a precedent for others and contribute to the pro-surveillance governments round the globe. Can't Trump be tricked into disapproving this?
- nanistheonlyist 9y agoThe stain of Islamism must first be cleansed from the earth, if humanity is to survive long enough to populate the rest of the galaxy.
- maxxxxx 9y agoThere is no endgame. Even if terrorism stops the security measures will be used for any kind of inconvenient people. I think this will get worse until some kind of revolution or big war will rewind the clock.
- megous 9y agoEnd game is escalation to more regional wars and more terrorism. Hard to see something else if response to terrorism is destruction of entire cities and driving former inhabitants further into poverty and ignorance. My guess.
- closeparen 9y agoWhen the world no longer contains young men with nothing to lose and the feeling that they are victims of oppression. The beauty of the War on Terror is that if we are ever at risk of running out of terrorists in the world, it'll make some new ones.
- e12e 9y agoIt's nice to see other government agencies doing their part for the environment as the US withdraw from the climate accords. In this case we have the DHS making a valiant effort to reduce international flights. /s
- avckp 9y agoWhy do they want to store the image at all? Compare against the stored values and discard the captured image. That should be enough.
- probablybanned 9y agoAuditing, perhaps? If someone manages to enter on a stolen passport I'm sure they'd like to be able to go back and see what image was captured and why the system returned a false positive.
- justinclift 9y ago> Why do they want to store the image at all? If the scanners are upgraded to 3D (likely at some point), it'll make for a good source of model data for future fabrication efforts. Along the lines of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14786863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14786863
- wheaties 9y agoHere's what they didn't say... DHS shares all data with other groups. If those groups don't erase them then, well... they at least can say they delete them.
- ben_jones 9y agoThe worst part for me in that the DHS likely spent billions of dollars on this solution that is likely riddled with software and hardware bugs and will ultimately catch less then a dozen petty criminals in its lifespan. Meanwhile the raw data on innocent citizens will be harvested and at best analyzed and stored indefinitely by the NSA and similar agencies, at worst it will be sold to the highest bidder - and then shortly after to any bidder.
- rasengan0 9y agoThis happened to us in mid May 2017 coming back from Germany to Philadelphia. Lock step herded in snake lined queue, camera kiosks posted as confused passengers deciphered touch screen directives to scan their passports and stand for a photo. Each machine had what appeared to be cat5 cable and power routed to the wall. After what appeared to be a cheap thermal printout of your mug shot, passengers were instructed to take it to a human agent for further processing. The most interesting aspect of this was the big sign of NO cameras or smartphones allowed despite it being quite easy to see passport information from adjacent stations. I assumed this was the new National ID effort to put an end to any enemies of the State. After all this, there was the CBP agricultural inspection and a security check all this from direct debarcation. Basically you are trapped and there is no way of escape from these processings. Welcome to the new State.
- pdimitar 9y agoAs a foreign observer, to me USA are shooting themselves in the foot. What made USA great in the first place is now being relentlessly attacked by the USA itself. That's how it seems to me as a non-expert.