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TSA Plans to Use Face Recognition to Track Americans Through Airports

251 points by hourislate 9y ago

saas_co_de 9y ago
While I think there are legitimate concerns about how this technology will be used I also think that there is a bit of FUD here: > losing your social security or credit card numbers to fraud is nothing compared to losing your biometrics. While you can change those numbers, you can’t easily change your face. What does this even mean? Last time I checked anyone can take my picture any time I am in public. Is their theory that someone is going to use a mission impossible face mask to impersonate me and then get me put on a terrorist watch list? How would having machines doing facial recognition change anything from having humans doing facial recognition? If anything the machines will be more accurate, so face theft will be less of a problem, but I have never heard of any real life cases of face theft, so I don't actually think it is or will be a problem. > However, due to the fact that immigrants and people of color are disproportionately represented in criminal and immigration databases, and that face recognition systems are less capable of identifying people of color, women, and young people, the weight of these inaccuracies will fall disproportionately on them. This is a fascinating finding and definitely a subject of concern. You can read the research this is based on here: http://openbiometrics.org/publications/klare2012demographics.pdf http://openbiometrics.org/publications/klare2012demographics... What I would point out here is that even if there are race and gender discrepancies in algorithmic performance for facial recognition these systems are being used as a replacement for humans who are not exactly known for being free from racial and gender bias. At least the facial recognition system is not going to share see through images of you with their colleagues or give you an enhanced pat down because they find you attractive. Even if the algorithms are less accurate for some groups it should be possible to adjust the algorithms to require a higher level of certainty for those groups so that no group experiences a higher rate of false positives than any other. That is something you can't do with people that you can do with a machine.
- csydas 9y ago
  I'm glad you quoted the second point, as it combined with this part is what I think the EFF finds concerning: > These agencies aren’t just collecting biometrics for their own use; they are also sharing them with other agencies like the FBI and with “private partners” to be used in ways that should concern travelers. This is be big crux of it for me - that the data gets shared outside of the Government, and I'm honestly a bit iffy on it even within Government agencies. Already the false positive rate for many of the identifying methods used in such investigations is too high; a lot of research is being done as to the validity of most forensic analysis regarding fingerprinting (as well as other traditional forensic evidence) and how the justice system is not doing due diligence in their case research, is not being honest with their findings when presenting to court, and public belief in such myths created by TV dramas has dramatically altered jurors' understanding of such evidence. Basically, such data getting shared out that makes it that much easier for law enforcement to concoct a case is disconcerting, to say the least, and I'm not even part of the population that would be most heavily affected by it. If this was just being used in one agency or area of focus (Border Control/TSA), it would be a little less disconcerting. It's not great still, but I suppose it's better than the current passport system for figuring out who you are. (As an expat, my biggest fear is losing my passport and proving who I am in a completely foreign country, much less returning to my own country). To be able to shift my means of identification to something I cannot lose or have stolen from me would be very reassuring, as long as it required multiple live samples to verify. But the fact that this information leaks out by design into a very dangerous world of Law Enforcement that doesn't care to make sure they've got the right guy is frightening. I've dealt with this indirectly as a certain State in the union decided that I was overdue for multiple vehicle violations, even though I had been out of the country for the last 3 years when the incidents took place; it just so happens I share the same name as someone else who is not a very good driver. It took a lot of talking on the phone and finding a way to fax flight information and passport stamps to convince them to stop bothering my parents with letters and phone calls, since their address is my mailing address. I was lucky enough to be able to tell them to "go fuck themselves" with indisputable proof that I was not in the country; others would not nearly be as lucky, that that's pretty frightening.
- AnthonyMouse 9y ago
  > Is their theory that someone is going to use a mission impossible face mask to impersonate me and then get me put on a terrorist watch list? Biometrics are basically useless, but they're useless in two separate contexts. Using them for access control is useless because of this: > Last time I checked anyone can take my picture any time I am in public. Lifting someone's fingerprints or face/iris scan is easy, and fooling an automated scanner is not very expensive. Which makes it terrible access control any time gaining access is worth more than e.g. $50. > If anything the machines will be more accurate That is definitively false. Face recognition is one of the things humans evolved to do as a prerequisite to survival. We're really, really good at it. The only reason anyone wants to use machines at all is that they're cheaper and scale better. They are not more accurate. At best they may become as accurate, but that is only a headache because it makes their false positives undesirably convincing. Which brings us to the second context in which biometrics are useless. Trying to match random people off the street to people on some kind of watch list. Because the false positive rate is a few percent, which is several orders of magnitude higher than the ratio of people on the watch list to people in the general population. So the vast majority of people the machine flags will be innocent. Worse, the people the machine thinks look like someone on the list, it always thinks that. So you implement something like this and it ruins the lives of anyone who looks enough like someone on the list for the machines to consistently flag them.
  - saas_co_de 9y ago
    > That is definitively false. We're really, really good at it. machines [are] cheaper and scale better. I am taking the "cheaper and scale better" part into account when I say that machines will be more accurate. If you want to pick a face out of thousands in a crowd or match a single face to a list of thousands of targets facial recognition is going to outperform humans at the same cost. > the false positive rate is a few percent The false positive rate is whatever you configure it to be. The confidence level for flagging someone is a parameter and you can adjust it to whatever false positive rate is acceptable. > the vast majority of people the machine flags will be innocent Every single flag will be reviewed by a human who will decide whether or not to take action based on it. This is no different than a human looking at a list of suspects and then watching for matches, except that the computer can use a much larger suspect list, and give the human hints. > Worse, the people the machine thinks look like someone on the bad list, it always thinks look like them Every time a person is flagged that must be reviewed by a human. If the human marks the flag as a false positive then the algorithm learns from its mistake. The idea that people will be repeatedly flagged is FUD unless they look a lot like the target, which is a problem with humans too: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-identical-twins-murder-confession-met-20160922-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-identic...
zkms 9y ago
They already have this at Gatwick, there's security gates/turnstiles where the system doesn't let you pass until it's scanned your face and associated it with your boarding pass, and IIRC they scanned faces again right before boarding. There's also cameras scattered throughout the airport which have spinning/swirly LED rings around the lens (which look like this: https://www.hrsid.com/assets/images/art/proven-passenger-queue-measurement.gif https://www.hrsid.com/assets/images/art/proven-passenger-que...) -- meant to trick you into involuntarily looking at the cameras. It's flagrantly and unashamedly dystopian.
- lucaspiller 9y ago
  Might as well just link directly to the manufacturer as these ‘features’ are the selling point of this hardware: http://www.hrsid.com/product-mflow http://www.hrsid.com/product-mflow
- dzhiurgis 9y ago
  I'd argue the spinner is a nice addition, explicitly reminding people are being filmed and to stop them from doing stupid shit while entering the country.
  - ionised 9y ago
    Stupid shit like what?
    - avs733 9y ago
      wanting to enter that type of country
    - dzhiurgis 9y ago
      Like pranking your bro’s about bombs and drugs you are bringing because you’ve binge drunk for last 15 hours while locked up in ergonomically impossible position. Honestly, the ‘forces you to look into camera with a straight face’ is awful idea. Many countries already have cams to scan you when talking with immigration officer.
- 9y ago
sho 9y ago
> (Every government on earth) plans to use face recognition to track (everyone) through airports Fixed it for you. I know for a fact at least 2 asian countries which are either actively using or trialling this, and not just at airports. Both already have fairly comprehensive facial recognition DBs of their citizens (smile for your driver's license picture!) I've also heard anecdotal accounts of people who stay too long airside at SIN being questioned by airport police. They walk right up to them - pretty obvious what's going on. My only surprise is that they would reveal their capabilities so obviously, but maybe that's a deliberate strategy ("we know everything so don't try anything"). It's only a matter of time before basically all governments are doing this. The tech is there.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- FRex 9y ago
  There might be problems with the laws still. I.e. Polish constitution has 'Public authorities shall not acquire, collect nor make accessible information on citizens other than that which is necessary in a democratic state ruled by law.'. There are many techs out there that are quite dystopian (face scans, mass surveillance, etc.) or outright evil (alleged organ harvesting of death row inmates in China) but yet the governments aren't doing it. Even that article in Polish constitution smells (to me personally) like it came due to secret police back in communism collecting 'dirt' on people, that required 0 tech, just secret informants with small monetary incentives or who were blackmailed with dirt already collected, telling little bits of 'innocent' things and yet I can't imagine many (if any) countries Western democratic doing that.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > outright evil (alleged organ harvesting of death row inmates in China) Why is this necessarily evil?
    - berbec 9y ago
      While if done properly, this isn't in and of itself evil, it leads to a slippery slope. Larry Niven wrote stories of a future where the organ banks were always empty, and the population voted the death penalty in for lesser and lesser crimes. The tale I recall has a man trying to escape from his capital trial for running a red light.
ekianjo 9y ago
I think Australia plans to switch to full face recognition based immigration check in the very near future (next year) for its airports, as long as you have a biometric passport. So the whole process would be automated.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  It already is, isn't it? I didn't have to talk to anybody as I went through immigration a couple of months ago, I just scanned my passport, and looked at the camera, and they let me in. Same story for New Zealand. Or do you mean you wouldn't even have to scan your passport?
  - ajdlinux 9y ago
    http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/facial-recognition-technology-to-replace-passport-scans-at-airports-20170726-gxjd5v.html http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/faci...
megaman22 9y ago
Hey, if it means I can keep my shoes and my belt on going through security, I'm all for it. Anything that is going to actually be effective, and not merely massively inconvenient security theater.
- mandeepj 9y ago
  > if it means I can keep my shoes and my belt on going through security, I'm all for it. The option is already there for this - TSAPre
  - tehlike 9y ago
    Get global entry instead, if you were planning to get TSAPre.
  - bzbarsky 9y ago
    1) Doesn't work if you're flying international on a non-US airline (great protectionist measure there). 2) Requires you to give the government your fingerprints. This is particularly a problem if you have children between the ages of 13 and 18 (old enough to not just get pre-check if the parents have it, not old enough yet to make their own decisions about whether the government should have their fingerprints). 3) Not available at all airports. 4) Not available at all gates at the airports where it _is_ available (even for US airlines). It's better than nothing as long as item 2 is not a problem for you, but it's a lot worse than sanity would be.
- Smushman 9y ago
  You can get excited then, because you can be sure this will be used to supplement vs supplant any existing US security theater. We couldn't lay off the nearly 250,000 active employees of the Security Theater arm of the US Government just because we had an actionable technological solution that reliably worked. We have votes to think about!
  - wallace_f 9y ago
    Just to illustrate how wasteful the TSA is. It has spent over a billion on something called deception detection. A method with no scientific foundation. It is not clear what, if any, good has come out of the program.[1] I would be interested in the cost-per-life-saved by TSA, and how many orders of magnitude larger than universal healthcare it would be. 1 - www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aclu-tsa-20170207-story.html
jeffwilcox 9y ago
Frankly surprised they aren't doing it already, or at least some other agency. The Europeans seem to be leading when it comes to some of this tech, though at least with GDPR in theory it's a rolling 30-day window of data and not anything too permanent.
- dzhiurgis 9y ago
  What you really going to store permanently? The fact you travelled is already there, either in your passport or in one of hundreds of databases.
  - arbie 9y ago
    Can't a positive match be stored as new ground truth for retraining or reinforcing the recognition model?
pvdebbe 9y ago
I'm surprised they didn't do this already.
joelrunyon 9y ago
When you fly into HKG - they pretty forcefully make you take off any confusing items that obscure your face (specifically hats) when walking away from your gate. Pretty obvious what they're doing.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- FRex 9y ago
  Are you sure? I was made to take off my fish fur ushanka once on an European airport even though it had no metal in it and didn't cover my face, they were just overzealous (and it only happened once out of 3-6 checks in airports I wore it through). Also - how forcefully? Just asking firmly or taking your things off? And what about religious hats, like the Sikh headwraps?
  - joelrunyon 9y ago
    They will stop you and wait for you to take it off. I haven't had them make me do it, but I wouldn't be surprised if you put up a fight.
- robryk 9y ago
  I remember something similar in Taiwan in 2008. The ostensible reason was that they want to have a thermal camera pointed at people's faces so that they can see if someone has a fever. I don't expect that face recognition was the real reason at that time. Also, what do they do with people wearing lots of makeup?
  - overlordalex 9y ago
    International arrivals in South Africa have the thermal camera - the line before they check your passport funnels you past the camera (whose screen is visible). If you come up "hot" then a separate immigration officer pulls you aside for a more in-depth questioning. These cameras first went up around the time the H1N1 swine flu was making headlines, and then just never came down. Since everyone is made to present their faces head-on, without glasses/masks, it would be trivial for the government to simply siphon off the data.
sidesquid 9y ago
Singapore's newest terminal runs fully on automatic immigration with facial recognition. http://t4.changiairport.com/en/fast http://t4.changiairport.com/en/fast
- hansjorg 9y ago
  They've had this for a while in immigration at least. Second time I visited (about 2003) I was greeted with a picture of my first visit through immigration there. Shown on a flat panel with a camera on top. Might just've been a tech demo though.
  - sidesquid 9y ago
    The existing ones are for returning citizens and PRs for arrival. The new terminal is using facial recognition for all immigration for departure as well, meaning there's no immigration officer. A swift process.
cm2187 9y ago
If it works as well as epassport gates, we are safe for a while.
reacweb 9y ago
IMHO, there are places where we expect privacy. An airport is not one of them.
tsukikage 9y ago
Opportunity for people selling adversarial jewelry and eurion face painting?
unabridged 9y ago
>plans? Casinos and even grocery stores have been using facial recognition for years. I highly doubt these systems have not been in place for airports for a long time.
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
I'm really sick of the TSA being used as the testing grounds for mass surviellance technologies and surveillance normalization. Why don't they just call it the Getting Americans Used to the Idea of Being Spied On Agency? Their current excuse is so thin it hurts.
- camiller 9y ago
  Pretty sure they will be leveraging the tech casinos already use for face tracking.
  - grogenaut 9y ago
    +1 I haven't been back to a casino since they kept thanking my friends by name even though they never told them their names. I don't gamble so the only loss was expensive bufffets. The 3rd f is for fat.
- eighthnate 9y ago
  > Their current excuse is so thin it hurts. It's thin to the educated few. But for the uneducated masses, they think government is doing this to help them. The easiest way for a government to get people to accept tyranny is to scare them with a threat ( external or internal ) and then claim the government is taking away rights in order to protect the public. The power of fear and propaganda is central to government overreach and control. Whether it is nazi germany's fear mongering over the international jewry or the soviet fear mongering over capitalist west or the fear mongering of communist china, north korea, britain, saudi arabia, israel and of course the US, all governments follow the same script. "If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid." - coelho
sailfast 9y ago
Can we talk about how to hack this? Is there camera-defeating reflective make-up that I can apply before going through an airport? How does one defeat these technologies effectively so that they are no longer useful to governments?
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  CV Dazzle did a good job of making a face look like a not-face a few years ago, but I'm not sure how well it would work today. I don't think there's any kind of make-up that would be visible to a camera, but not obvious to the naked eye, and still be able to defeat face recognition. My plan would be to create a new religion in the United States that makes the wearing of face masks and veils in public an essential tenet. After the traditional new-religion battles over tax status and state recognition have been won in the US, shame the European countries into reforming their enabling laws using the mallet of religious liberty. The downside is that you would likely have to actually believe--or at least convincingly fake--that showing your true face in public is taboo, and that being forcibly unmasked is a horrifying violation of your privacy and personal dignity. I recall reading a short story that might be useful as basis, wherein everyone wore a mask at all times, and never spoke without providing musical accompaniment from one of a variety of instruments. The economy was based upon reputation and character rather than money, such that you could get most valuable things just by asking for them, but the shopkeepers had to decide that you were good enough to bear them first. The low-status masks were somewhat standardized and uniform, such that you could be "red goblin" for a day, and only play your pocket xylophone, and thus achieve a measure of public anonymity. Then, the next day, you could be "glorious fiery phoenix" and play your double-stringed lyre with brass resonators, and everyone would know you to be a really special and important person, because the craftspeople would never give away their best work to just anybody. Unfortunately, I have forgotten the title and the author, and web searching is turning up nothing. And unfortunately, that is a very long-term strategy, which would take many years and a lot of cooperation to pull off. Right now, anything you are likely to do to defeat automated facial recognition is likely to get you additional attention from human cops. And depending on where you are, that "attention" may also include extrajudicial punishment for non-conformity.
olingern 9y ago
So, by flying on an airplane I forfeit my privacy in exchange for a facade of security? Nothing suspect about this.
nachosgalore 9y ago
At the rate surveillance is encroaching upon us, how long before we start receiving visits from Grammaton Clerics? Or precog women in bathtubs are reading our thoughts?
johansch 9y ago
I always wondered if those passport scanners/photo booths/turnstiles at e.g. Helsinki airport has a human somewhere that decides if your face matches your passport or not. Does anyone know?
- joshvm 9y ago
  I believe it's automatic with human oversight. In the UK there's always an officer or two watching the feeds from each of the electronic gates. Whether they're actually confirming each match, or just checking for outliers, I don't know though.
exabrial 9y ago
http://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-operation-us-airports/story?id=51022188 http://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-o... I can't believe the TSA came in _as low_ as 80% a failure rate. The fact that they managed to stop _anything_ done by professionals is sort of amazing in my mind.
- glenneroo 9y ago
  To be fair, they improved slightly over the past 2 years: > The news of the failure comes two years after ABC News reported that secret teams from the DHS found that the TSA failed 95 percent of the time to stop inspectors from smuggling weapons or explosive materials through screening.
khana 9y ago
Gee I didn't see that coming.
Carhughes 9y ago
Yeah, not happy about Big Brother intruding even more here. I hate to say it but why can't they do face recognition on more likely suspects visiting ISIS strongholds and regions. Instead they want to vacuum hose all Americans in a wide dragnet. This is BS.

251 points by hourislate 9y ago

While I think there are legitimate concerns about how this technology will be used I also think that there is a bit of FUD here: > losing your social security or credit card numbers to fraud is nothing compared to losing your biometrics. While you can change those numbers, you can’t easily change your face. What does this even mean? Last time I checked anyone can take my picture any time I am in public. Is their theory that someone is going to use a mission impossible face mask to impersonate me and then get me put on a terrorist watch list? How would having machines doing facial recognition change anything from having humans doing facial recognition? If anything the machines will be more accurate, so face theft will be less of a problem, but I have never heard of any real life cases of face theft, so I don't actually think it is or will be a problem. > However, due to the fact that immigrants and people of color are disproportionately represented in criminal and immigration databases, and that face recognition systems are less capable of identifying people of color, women, and young people, the weight of these inaccuracies will fall disproportionately on them. This is a fascinating finding and definitely a subject of concern. You can read the research this is based on here: http://openbiometrics.org/publications/klare2012demographics.pdf http://openbiometrics.org/publications/klare2012demographics... What I would point out here is that even if there are race and gender discrepancies in algorithmic performance for facial recognition these systems are being used as a replacement for humans who are not exactly known for being free from racial and gender bias. At least the facial recognition system is not going to share see through images of you with their colleagues or give you an enhanced pat down because they find you attractive. Even if the algorithms are less accurate for some groups it should be possible to adjust the algorithms to require a higher level of certainty for those groups so that no group experiences a higher rate of false positives than any other. That is something you can't do with people that you can do with a machine.

csydas 9y ago
I'm glad you quoted the second point, as it combined with this part is what I think the EFF finds concerning: > These agencies aren’t just collecting biometrics for their own use; they are also sharing them with other agencies like the FBI and with “private partners” to be used in ways that should concern travelers. This is be big crux of it for me - that the data gets shared outside of the Government, and I'm honestly a bit iffy on it even within Government agencies. Already the false positive rate for many of the identifying methods used in such investigations is too high; a lot of research is being done as to the validity of most forensic analysis regarding fingerprinting (as well as other traditional forensic evidence) and how the justice system is not doing due diligence in their case research, is not being honest with their findings when presenting to court, and public belief in such myths created by TV dramas has dramatically altered jurors' understanding of such evidence. Basically, such data getting shared out that makes it that much easier for law enforcement to concoct a case is disconcerting, to say the least, and I'm not even part of the population that would be most heavily affected by it. If this was just being used in one agency or area of focus (Border Control/TSA), it would be a little less disconcerting. It's not great still, but I suppose it's better than the current passport system for figuring out who you are. (As an expat, my biggest fear is losing my passport and proving who I am in a completely foreign country, much less returning to my own country). To be able to shift my means of identification to something I cannot lose or have stolen from me would be very reassuring, as long as it required multiple live samples to verify. But the fact that this information leaks out by design into a very dangerous world of Law Enforcement that doesn't care to make sure they've got the right guy is frightening. I've dealt with this indirectly as a certain State in the union decided that I was overdue for multiple vehicle violations, even though I had been out of the country for the last 3 years when the incidents took place; it just so happens I share the same name as someone else who is not a very good driver. It took a lot of talking on the phone and finding a way to fax flight information and passport stamps to convince them to stop bothering my parents with letters and phone calls, since their address is my mailing address. I was lucky enough to be able to tell them to "go fuck themselves" with indisputable proof that I was not in the country; others would not nearly be as lucky, that that's pretty frightening.
AnthonyMouse 9y ago
> Is their theory that someone is going to use a mission impossible face mask to impersonate me and then get me put on a terrorist watch list? Biometrics are basically useless, but they're useless in two separate contexts. Using them for access control is useless because of this: > Last time I checked anyone can take my picture any time I am in public. Lifting someone's fingerprints or face/iris scan is easy, and fooling an automated scanner is not very expensive. Which makes it terrible access control any time gaining access is worth more than e.g. $50. > If anything the machines will be more accurate That is definitively false. Face recognition is one of the things humans evolved to do as a prerequisite to survival. We're really, really good at it. The only reason anyone wants to use machines at all is that they're cheaper and scale better. They are not more accurate. At best they may become as accurate, but that is only a headache because it makes their false positives undesirably convincing. Which brings us to the second context in which biometrics are useless. Trying to match random people off the street to people on some kind of watch list. Because the false positive rate is a few percent, which is several orders of magnitude higher than the ratio of people on the watch list to people in the general population. So the vast majority of people the machine flags will be innocent. Worse, the people the machine thinks look like someone on the list, it always thinks that. So you implement something like this and it ruins the lives of anyone who looks enough like someone on the list for the machines to consistently flag them.
- saas_co_de 9y ago
  > That is definitively false. We're really, really good at it. machines [are] cheaper and scale better. I am taking the "cheaper and scale better" part into account when I say that machines will be more accurate. If you want to pick a face out of thousands in a crowd or match a single face to a list of thousands of targets facial recognition is going to outperform humans at the same cost. > the false positive rate is a few percent The false positive rate is whatever you configure it to be. The confidence level for flagging someone is a parameter and you can adjust it to whatever false positive rate is acceptable. > the vast majority of people the machine flags will be innocent Every single flag will be reviewed by a human who will decide whether or not to take action based on it. This is no different than a human looking at a list of suspects and then watching for matches, except that the computer can use a much larger suspect list, and give the human hints. > Worse, the people the machine thinks look like someone on the bad list, it always thinks look like them Every time a person is flagged that must be reviewed by a human. If the human marks the flag as a false positive then the algorithm learns from its mistake. The idea that people will be repeatedly flagged is FUD unless they look a lot like the target, which is a problem with humans too: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-identical-twins-murder-confession-met-20160922-story.html http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-identic...

zkms 9y ago

They already have this at Gatwick, there's security gates/turnstiles where the system doesn't let you pass until it's scanned your face and associated it with your boarding pass, and IIRC they scanned faces again right before boarding. There's also cameras scattered throughout the airport which have spinning/swirly LED rings around the lens (which look like this: https://www.hrsid.com/assets/images/art/proven-passenger-queue-measurement.gif https://www.hrsid.com/assets/images/art/proven-passenger-que...) -- meant to trick you into involuntarily looking at the cameras. It's flagrantly and unashamedly dystopian.

lucaspiller 9y ago
Might as well just link directly to the manufacturer as these ‘features’ are the selling point of this hardware: http://www.hrsid.com/product-mflow http://www.hrsid.com/product-mflow
dzhiurgis 9y ago
I'd argue the spinner is a nice addition, explicitly reminding people are being filmed and to stop them from doing stupid shit while entering the country.
- ionised 9y ago
  Stupid shit like what?
  - avs733 9y ago
    wanting to enter that type of country
  - dzhiurgis 9y ago
    Like pranking your bro’s about bombs and drugs you are bringing because you’ve binge drunk for last 15 hours while locked up in ergonomically impossible position. Honestly, the ‘forces you to look into camera with a straight face’ is awful idea. Many countries already have cams to scan you when talking with immigration officer.
9y ago

sho 9y ago

> (Every government on earth) plans to use face recognition to track (everyone) through airports Fixed it for you. I know for a fact at least 2 asian countries which are either actively using or trialling this, and not just at airports. Both already have fairly comprehensive facial recognition DBs of their citizens (smile for your driver's license picture!) I've also heard anecdotal accounts of people who stay too long airside at SIN being questioned by airport police. They walk right up to them - pretty obvious what's going on. My only surprise is that they would reveal their capabilities so obviously, but maybe that's a deliberate strategy ("we know everything so don't try anything"). It's only a matter of time before basically all governments are doing this. The tech is there.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
FRex 9y ago
There might be problems with the laws still. I.e. Polish constitution has 'Public authorities shall not acquire, collect nor make accessible information on citizens other than that which is necessary in a democratic state ruled by law.'. There are many techs out there that are quite dystopian (face scans, mass surveillance, etc.) or outright evil (alleged organ harvesting of death row inmates in China) but yet the governments aren't doing it. Even that article in Polish constitution smells (to me personally) like it came due to secret police back in communism collecting 'dirt' on people, that required 0 tech, just secret informants with small monetary incentives or who were blackmailed with dirt already collected, telling little bits of 'innocent' things and yet I can't imagine many (if any) countries Western democratic doing that.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > outright evil (alleged organ harvesting of death row inmates in China) Why is this necessarily evil?
  - berbec 9y ago
    While if done properly, this isn't in and of itself evil, it leads to a slippery slope. Larry Niven wrote stories of a future where the organ banks were always empty, and the population voted the death penalty in for lesser and lesser crimes. The tale I recall has a man trying to escape from his capital trial for running a red light.

ekianjo 9y ago

I think Australia plans to switch to full face recognition based immigration check in the very near future (next year) for its airports, as long as you have a biometric passport. So the whole process would be automated.

toomanybeersies 9y ago
It already is, isn't it? I didn't have to talk to anybody as I went through immigration a couple of months ago, I just scanned my passport, and looked at the camera, and they let me in. Same story for New Zealand. Or do you mean you wouldn't even have to scan your passport?
- ajdlinux 9y ago
  http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/facial-recognition-technology-to-replace-passport-scans-at-airports-20170726-gxjd5v.html http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/public-service/faci...

megaman22 9y ago

Hey, if it means I can keep my shoes and my belt on going through security, I'm all for it. Anything that is going to actually be effective, and not merely massively inconvenient security theater.

mandeepj 9y ago
> if it means I can keep my shoes and my belt on going through security, I'm all for it. The option is already there for this - TSAPre
- tehlike 9y ago
  Get global entry instead, if you were planning to get TSAPre.
- bzbarsky 9y ago
  1) Doesn't work if you're flying international on a non-US airline (great protectionist measure there). 2) Requires you to give the government your fingerprints. This is particularly a problem if you have children between the ages of 13 and 18 (old enough to not just get pre-check if the parents have it, not old enough yet to make their own decisions about whether the government should have their fingerprints). 3) Not available at all airports. 4) Not available at all gates at the airports where it _is_ available (even for US airlines). It's better than nothing as long as item 2 is not a problem for you, but it's a lot worse than sanity would be.
Smushman 9y ago
You can get excited then, because you can be sure this will be used to supplement vs supplant any existing US security theater. We couldn't lay off the nearly 250,000 active employees of the Security Theater arm of the US Government just because we had an actionable technological solution that reliably worked. We have votes to think about!
- wallace_f 9y ago
  Just to illustrate how wasteful the TSA is. It has spent over a billion on something called deception detection. A method with no scientific foundation. It is not clear what, if any, good has come out of the program.[1] I would be interested in the cost-per-life-saved by TSA, and how many orders of magnitude larger than universal healthcare it would be. 1 - www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-aclu-tsa-20170207-story.html

jeffwilcox 9y ago

Frankly surprised they aren't doing it already, or at least some other agency. The Europeans seem to be leading when it comes to some of this tech, though at least with GDPR in theory it's a rolling 30-day window of data and not anything too permanent.

dzhiurgis 9y ago
What you really going to store permanently? The fact you travelled is already there, either in your passport or in one of hundreds of databases.
- arbie 9y ago
  Can't a positive match be stored as new ground truth for retraining or reinforcing the recognition model?

pvdebbe 9y ago

I'm surprised they didn't do this already.

joelrunyon 9y ago

When you fly into HKG - they pretty forcefully make you take off any confusing items that obscure your face (specifically hats) when walking away from your gate. Pretty obvious what they're doing.

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FRex 9y ago
Are you sure? I was made to take off my fish fur ushanka once on an European airport even though it had no metal in it and didn't cover my face, they were just overzealous (and it only happened once out of 3-6 checks in airports I wore it through). Also - how forcefully? Just asking firmly or taking your things off? And what about religious hats, like the Sikh headwraps?
- joelrunyon 9y ago
  They will stop you and wait for you to take it off. I haven't had them make me do it, but I wouldn't be surprised if you put up a fight.
robryk 9y ago
I remember something similar in Taiwan in 2008. The ostensible reason was that they want to have a thermal camera pointed at people's faces so that they can see if someone has a fever. I don't expect that face recognition was the real reason at that time. Also, what do they do with people wearing lots of makeup?
- overlordalex 9y ago
  International arrivals in South Africa have the thermal camera - the line before they check your passport funnels you past the camera (whose screen is visible). If you come up "hot" then a separate immigration officer pulls you aside for a more in-depth questioning. These cameras first went up around the time the H1N1 swine flu was making headlines, and then just never came down. Since everyone is made to present their faces head-on, without glasses/masks, it would be trivial for the government to simply siphon off the data.

sidesquid 9y ago

Singapore's newest terminal runs fully on automatic immigration with facial recognition. http://t4.changiairport.com/en/fast http://t4.changiairport.com/en/fast

hansjorg 9y ago
They've had this for a while in immigration at least. Second time I visited (about 2003) I was greeted with a picture of my first visit through immigration there. Shown on a flat panel with a camera on top. Might just've been a tech demo though.
- sidesquid 9y ago
  The existing ones are for returning citizens and PRs for arrival. The new terminal is using facial recognition for all immigration for departure as well, meaning there's no immigration officer. A swift process.

cm2187 9y ago

If it works as well as epassport gates, we are safe for a while.

reacweb 9y ago

IMHO, there are places where we expect privacy. An airport is not one of them.

tsukikage 9y ago

Opportunity for people selling adversarial jewelry and eurion face painting?

unabridged 9y ago

>plans? Casinos and even grocery stores have been using facial recognition for years. I highly doubt these systems have not been in place for airports for a long time.

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago

I'm really sick of the TSA being used as the testing grounds for mass surviellance technologies and surveillance normalization. Why don't they just call it the Getting Americans Used to the Idea of Being Spied On Agency? Their current excuse is so thin it hurts.

camiller 9y ago
Pretty sure they will be leveraging the tech casinos already use for face tracking.
- grogenaut 9y ago
  +1 I haven't been back to a casino since they kept thanking my friends by name even though they never told them their names. I don't gamble so the only loss was expensive bufffets. The 3rd f is for fat.
eighthnate 9y ago
> Their current excuse is so thin it hurts. It's thin to the educated few. But for the uneducated masses, they think government is doing this to help them. The easiest way for a government to get people to accept tyranny is to scare them with a threat ( external or internal ) and then claim the government is taking away rights in order to protect the public. The power of fear and propaganda is central to government overreach and control. Whether it is nazi germany's fear mongering over the international jewry or the soviet fear mongering over capitalist west or the fear mongering of communist china, north korea, britain, saudi arabia, israel and of course the US, all governments follow the same script. "If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid." - coelho

sailfast 9y ago

Can we talk about how to hack this? Is there camera-defeating reflective make-up that I can apply before going through an airport? How does one defeat these technologies effectively so that they are no longer useful to governments?

logfromblammo 9y ago
CV Dazzle did a good job of making a face look like a not-face a few years ago, but I'm not sure how well it would work today. I don't think there's any kind of make-up that would be visible to a camera, but not obvious to the naked eye, and still be able to defeat face recognition. My plan would be to create a new religion in the United States that makes the wearing of face masks and veils in public an essential tenet. After the traditional new-religion battles over tax status and state recognition have been won in the US, shame the European countries into reforming their enabling laws using the mallet of religious liberty. The downside is that you would likely have to actually believe--or at least convincingly fake--that showing your true face in public is taboo, and that being forcibly unmasked is a horrifying violation of your privacy and personal dignity. I recall reading a short story that might be useful as basis, wherein everyone wore a mask at all times, and never spoke without providing musical accompaniment from one of a variety of instruments. The economy was based upon reputation and character rather than money, such that you could get most valuable things just by asking for them, but the shopkeepers had to decide that you were good enough to bear them first. The low-status masks were somewhat standardized and uniform, such that you could be "red goblin" for a day, and only play your pocket xylophone, and thus achieve a measure of public anonymity. Then, the next day, you could be "glorious fiery phoenix" and play your double-stringed lyre with brass resonators, and everyone would know you to be a really special and important person, because the craftspeople would never give away their best work to just anybody. Unfortunately, I have forgotten the title and the author, and web searching is turning up nothing. And unfortunately, that is a very long-term strategy, which would take many years and a lot of cooperation to pull off. Right now, anything you are likely to do to defeat automated facial recognition is likely to get you additional attention from human cops. And depending on where you are, that "attention" may also include extrajudicial punishment for non-conformity.

olingern 9y ago

So, by flying on an airplane I forfeit my privacy in exchange for a facade of security? Nothing suspect about this.

nachosgalore 9y ago

At the rate surveillance is encroaching upon us, how long before we start receiving visits from Grammaton Clerics? Or precog women in bathtubs are reading our thoughts?

johansch 9y ago

I always wondered if those passport scanners/photo booths/turnstiles at e.g. Helsinki airport has a human somewhere that decides if your face matches your passport or not. Does anyone know?

joshvm 9y ago
I believe it's automatic with human oversight. In the UK there's always an officer or two watching the feeds from each of the electronic gates. Whether they're actually confirming each match, or just checking for outliers, I don't know though.

exabrial 9y ago

http://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-operation-us-airports/story?id=51022188 http://abcnews.go.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-o... I can't believe the TSA came in _as low_ as 80% a failure rate. The fact that they managed to stop _anything_ done by professionals is sort of amazing in my mind.

glenneroo 9y ago
To be fair, they improved slightly over the past 2 years: > The news of the failure comes two years after ABC News reported that secret teams from the DHS found that the TSA failed 95 percent of the time to stop inspectors from smuggling weapons or explosive materials through screening.

khana 9y ago

Gee I didn't see that coming.

Carhughes 9y ago

Yeah, not happy about Big Brother intruding even more here. I hate to say it but why can't they do face recognition on more likely suspects visiting ISIS strongholds and regions. Instead they want to vacuum hose all Americans in a wide dragnet. This is BS.