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JetBlue has started using facial recognition instead of boarding passes

175 points by blahedo 7y ago

jypepin 7y ago
This sounds pretty insane indeed. How much should we be concerned about that? The gvt already has our image data, and knows our moves anyway right? Even without facial recognition, IDs and passports are asked when you travel, so the documentation of your travels already exists I assume?
- ahelwer 7y ago
  We should be very concerned, because this is obviously testing the waters before rolling out ubiquitous facial recognition. I honestly and earnestly believe that use of facial recognition technology should be banned in all its forms. The applications are limited and the downsides are massive.
  - cocochanel 7y ago
    Could you please elaborate on the downsides? Gov't has your data since you were born, complete with your photos, IDs, you name it. What makes you think it's any different now?
    - Xylakant 7y ago
      Your government has your data, but this scheme would require that it gets mine, too.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - ehnto 7y ago
      The difference is that ubiquitous facial recognition allows for near seamless tracking of individuals and explicitly without a warrant or their consent. It's an important milestone because it moves us from a "reasonable book keeping" level of tracking to full blown seamless tracking and again importantly, without our consent. To imagine it a bit more viscerally, imagine instead that the system had no cameras and instead required you to submit your daily movement report at the end of each day. An agent walks from door to door and you hand him your written report of exactly what you did today and that gets entered into the Government Saftey and Oversight Commission Database. What are they going to use all that data for? There are only a handful of good reasons, but a disproportionate list of bad reasons that explicitly limit freedom. Second to that. Would you be as comfortable going to a strip club or a fringe political gathering or a conference for a controversial topic if you knew you had to put it in your report? It has a chilling effect on freedom of movement and pushes fringe activities that are perfectly safe and legal into the darkness.
      - duckface 7y ago
        you people are pretty stupid. ATMs have tracking, point of point of sale has tracking, your phone, internet it's all tracked and linked back to you.
        ehnto 7y ago
        No one said they didn't track anything already. But they don't have the full picture yet. Many people pay cash for things. Currently no tracking if you just visit somewhere and don't pay for anything. Not everyone has GPS enabled on their phone. Ubiquitous facial recognition fills in all of this missing data well enough, and without you doing anything but walking out your front door.
        justwalt 7y ago
        I think you’re right. Maybe we should skip the facial recognition and install RFID tags behind our eyes, after all, they basically know all of that info already anyways.
  - Scea91 7y ago
    In this particular case, the application of facial recognition improves airport security (against forged passports, sloppy security personnel, ...) while not probably requiring any additional information than what would already be provided by passports with biometric data. In my opinion, this is one of the few applications where it actually makes sense.
    - kelnos 7y ago
      You need to first ask if you're protecting against a threat that actually exists and is material. Is that the case? Do we see rampant use of forged ID to get onto planes? Do we see sloppy security personnel letting people through who shouldn't be allowed? I just don't see the evidence that this isn't a solution searching for a problem.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      Do we know the instance count of forged passports vs the chances of spotting a fake when done by humans vs the computer? Sloppy security personnel is not something you address with tech, you address that with training and incentives.
- nilskidoo 7y ago
  For anyone without a private jet maybe. Does anyone seriously think the FAANG corporate boards will ever in their lives have to undergo this? If the feds wish to be paparazzi, then we should all give them something to really behold.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    > Does anyone seriously think the FAANG corporate boards will ever in their lives have to undergo this? Yes, me. All of them will already be used to being hounded by paparazzi, and it would be very human for them to mistake that for normal. Two of them (Facebook and Apple) already use face recognition in their products.
    - nilskidoo 7y ago
      That is incredibly naive. Wealth is the only thing that guarantees anonymity.
      - ben_w 7y ago
        Anonymity? They get their own Wikipedia pages and personalised conspiracy theories. Even “mere” multimillionaires like my first boss after graduating got that plus endless personal fan letters.
        keiferski 7y ago
        Anonymity is not the same as privacy. Mark Zuckerberg is known worldwide and has no ability to be anonymous. However aspects of his private life (his Facebook messages, for example) are far more private than the average person.
        ben_w 7y ago
        Zuckerberg’s password in June 2016 was “dadada”. That’s about as successful an attempt at privacy as the average person :)
- fyfy18 7y ago
  As long as the biometric data is held only by a government agency, and not shared with the airline, I don't have any issue with this. If this is implemented correctly, the airline should only get a response saying who the passenger is, or an error if they aren't recognised or aren't on the manifest for this flight. Passports already store biometric data, which I assume is also stored in some government database when you have it issued, so I don't see what's wrong with using that for something useful.
  - geggam 7y ago
    Just as a note you still remember Trump is head of a large govt agency ? So is Putin and Kim Jong Un... If you feel safe with those folks driving the direction govts are headed ... well..
oceliker 7y ago
I think this is being blown a bit out of proportion. The government definitely has your passport photo in a database. And since this facial recognition is happening only at boarding gates of international flights, it’s totally plausible that CBP has an isolated system, where Jetblue operates the device but doesn’t get any of the data.
- tdeck 7y ago
  But this is a great way to test and refine facial recognition to make it ubiquitous, which has serious implications for the government's ability to track everyone cheaply and with little recourse.
  - oceliker 7y ago
    I don’t think it provides a great way of testing and refining. The pictures are taken at a very controlled environment in this case; it doesn’t really generalize to CCTV. I don’t disagree with the argument regarding “normalizing” facial recognition in everyday life, though.
- oedmarap 7y ago
  I agree with you on this. Also, from the article: > "Once you take that high-quality photograph, why not run it against the FBI database? Why not run it against state databases of people with outstanding warrants?" I actually have no issue here. I would love it if law enforcement is aided in doing their job. I really don't want someone evading arrest for a recent violent crime or a person on the FBI's wanted list trying to board an aircraft with other passengers and succeeding. My issue is transparency on the data governance, security, and data residency of the entire system viz. where it's stored, who has access, and how is it accessed. OK equates to only the government having the database, secure access done remotely via API by the airline at check-in and boarding, a human present to verify any anomalies with the facial recognition & records access, and the boarding pass/ID/PP being used as a second factor if necessary. NOT OK equates to a private company running a central database, local copies of any database being stored by any airline, having facial recognition as the only option available, and having the data shared with any entity other than law enforcement.
purplezooey 7y ago
Ha. Seen your average US airport lately? Most look like a scene from the third world. Underfunded, dilapidated facilities coupled with cheapskate US carriers. Good luck with that.
- ben_w 7y ago
  Neither SFO nor JFK airport were as remotely dilapidated as Nairobi airport when I saw them.
  - skohan 7y ago
    JFK does seem quite dated when comparing to most European capitals, or large Asian hubs. There are some high-standard modern terminals in the US too though.
    - chungleong 7y ago
      By "most European capitals", I presume you're excluding Paris :-)
      - skohan 7y ago
        I haven’t flown into Paris recently but there are plenty of exceptions: Berlin’s not beautiful either (though it’s one of my favorite airports). But still the standard in Europe seems higher in general than North America.
        ben_w 7y ago
        I like Berlin Tegel, but Berlin Schönefeld always seemed to me to be its low-budget brother.
        skohan 7y ago
        Yeah I was speaking about Tegel. If you fly out of the main rotunda, it's great because every gate has its own security and bag drop so there's no long waits, even if it's busy. Schonefeld is like any other budget airport.
outside1234 7y ago
Presumably the government already has a list of people flying - do they really need your photo to do a scan against a list of warrants for your arrest? And do we not want them scanning that list against folks with a warrant for their arrest?
tommoor 7y ago
Last time I came into SFO through Global Entry there was no passport scan needed, just a quick look in the camera and it printed my receipt to enter the country. I've often thought that border control has the best time lapse of me aging
- martin_ 7y ago
  Interesting, how do you activate that flow? I landed at SFO last night and it prompted for me to insert my passport before it'd scan my face / take finger prints
  - hyeonwho4 7y ago
    Global Entry is a TSA program you can apply for. The TSA charges a fee of 100 USD and runs an in person interview. Edit: those under investigation, warrants, or charged with crimes are not elligible. Neither are those with passports from outside major US allies (India Colombia UK Germany Panama Singapore Korea Switzerland Taiwan Mexico Canada)
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - iancarroll 7y ago
      Global Entry is not a TSA program and it normally requires a physical travel document to use the GE kiosks. Curious that there is now a facial recognition-only kiosk. Edit: looks like this in MIA? https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/global-entry-celebrates-10-years-expediting-international-travel https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/global-e...
mch82 7y ago
How much longer will we allow our freedoms to be eroded? People were flying without any photo ID until just a few years ago (except internationally). We’ve given up so much freedom & so much of what made air travel fun in exchange for so little. We need to stop letting people scare us into giving away our freedoms.
- 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
  It’s security theatre at best; this technology will be used to monetize your biometric data, and you won’t get a single penny. Combine this with a social credit score system, and you will have a surveillance apparatus that is effectively unchecked.
- ultrarunner 7y ago
  > We’ve given up so much freedom Arguably it's merely been taken from us. There are plenty of who object, and the TSA is wildly unpopular. That makes little difference to the fact that the pace continues ever further. I don't mean to be defeatist, but I don't think a sternly worded letter has ever made much of a difference, and probably won't in the future. The only caveat is that when REAL ID takes effect and entire states full of people (e.g. Arizona) simply cannot fly, maybe enough complaints will be generated to come to some compromise. I'm not holding my breath, though.
  - chrisbolt 7y ago
    > The only caveat is that when REAL ID takes effect and entire states full of people (e.g. Arizona) simply cannot fly Citation? https://www.dhs.gov/real-id https://www.dhs.gov/real-id shows Arizona in green.
    - coredog64 7y ago
      Next October, a standard AZDL will not be eligible. AZDOT has been sending out notices on how to get an ID valid for air travel, but I’ve been ignoring them because I already have a passport.
  - 7y ago
big-deal 7y ago
Top comments suggest that the (U.S.) government certainly does this anway. Well guess what, now private global for-profit entities will trade databases with higher granularity and quality, around the world, in the most promiscuous ways imaginable. Ever seen pricing for mailing list leads, password databases, user id and home address mappings? Now add IMEI/GSM cellular identifiers. Now add location. Now add your face. All in commercial for-profit packages. Which includes private armies, investigators, credit ratings, and governments in other countries that choose to buy it up. And oh yeah, airlines certainly do business across borders. So think about this for a minute, before you say "big deal."
ryanthedev 7y ago
This is how it works. Airline takes multiple photos of you. Sends those photos along with flight context data. Over secure lines. To Homeland. They match photo to passport and passport info to flight manifest. All outside of the airlines infrastructure. Or at least should be.
- ryanthedev 7y ago
  If not passport could be drivers license. Or state id. Which would make sense because they don't allow certain state IDs to fly anymore. Everybody had to update.
  - tjohns 7y ago
    These are the CBP "Biometric Exit" kisoks, which are only for international flights. Which means everybody on those flights will have a passport.
mattlondon 7y ago
So how does this work for international travelers? Presumably the US government does not have the entire world's passport photos? Or do they...? Pretty worrying if so ... time for some GDPR requests maybe ... I think at Gatwick in the UK they have a similar system where they take a photo of you as you enter security and it is then checked again at the gate. It does not work well if you are wearing glasses. I wonder if some certain styles of eye wear would make facial recognition significantly ineffective? Highly unsymmetrical with lenses opaque to IR etc.
- ehnto 7y ago
  There have been movements in fashion already that are trying to combat facial recognition with clothing, makeup and accessories. I always imagined that was why cyberpunk characters tended to dress their faces so bizarrely. Kind of like kids hiding beneath their hoodies.
- blahedo 7y ago
  They have the passport photos from all US passports, plus all non-US people who have entered the country through a legal port of entry. That should cover everyone who's flying out of the country, right?
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Sure. Except for those who entered illegally. But I'm not sure how far they'd get even now. I'm guessing that checks on do-not-fly etc lists might already flag hem.
skilled 7y ago
I am guessing that the bigger concern here is that this is an 'enabler' tactic to expand facial recognition in other areas of our lives. And if this is the case, then there definitely needs to be some kind of ratification. Maybe this is unrelated, but it's starting to feel like every bad accident in this world is affecting us in this very strange way. For example, I was very surprised to find that Sri Lanka cut everyone off from social media "just like that". To think there are people with this kind of power seems a little frightening to say the least. But, what's even scarier is that these bombings and 'tragic' events tend to steer us in a very controlling direction. All of a sudden the government has an incentive to enforce more control over its citizens and society as a whole.
- jMyles 7y ago
  > All of a sudden the government has an incentive to enforce more control over its citizens and society as a whole. It's not sudden at all. The Reichstag fire [0] and the Reichstag Fire Decree [1], which is probably reasonably described as a pivotal part of the rise of Nazi Germany, demonstrate exactly the incentive you describe. At least as far back as 304 AD [2] - and probably further - people in power have noticed that they can exploit this incentive structure with a "false flag" attack. * 0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire * 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree * 2 https://books.google.co.za/books?id=RDqyIcSLJ0AC&pg=PA164&lpg=PA164&redir_esc=y https://books.google.co.za/books?id=RDqyIcSLJ0AC&pg=PA164&lp...
- zizee 7y ago
  This is not a new thing in American history, and probably predates America's existence: https://prospect.org/article/when-fear-threatens-freedom https://prospect.org/article/when-fear-threatens-freedom > The pattern of responding to threats by curtailing rights began early in American history. In 1798, when the future of the country was in doubt, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Act, which made it a crime to falsely criticize the government or government officials—men were sent to prison for speaking ill of certain individuals and decisions.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
tanilama 7y ago
That is great,
Chico11Kidlet 7y ago
If it keeps me safe, if it keeps the airplane from being flown into buildings, if it helps assure my safe passage to and from my destination and home to my family, then scan my face, and yours, as many times as needed. I have nothing to hide. As far as our liberty...this isn't the 1700s, Ben Franklin might have a different opinion today. I'd rather have the liberty of flying safely than it taken away by some terrorist hijackers using my life to prove a misguided point.
alkonaut 7y ago
If a private company says they'll take a picture of me at checkin and then verify that at boarding vs the same picture - then destroy the picture, I'm fine with that. It's a temporary storage of biometric data. I'm especially fine with it if I can opt to go for a paper passport instead. BUT If a private company uses some database, especially a centralized/government database, to do the same task - then it's absolutely dystopian.
- PietdeVries 7y ago
  Is the issue with the private company, or with the centralized/government instead? Suppose I start my own little company - at least on paper - can I submit a request to access this face-recognization database as well?
  - chapium 7y ago
    The issue is a bit of both. Customer assumed private company had unauthorized personal data after the company performed the boarding pass checkin.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  What do you think are the chances that any of this data is actually destroyed?
  - alkonaut 7y ago
    I think zero because as far as I understand this data is actually the second type - i.e. they aren't aquiring this data themselves, they are given access to the authorities' database.
- skohan 7y ago
  Yes I think there's a ton of potential benefit for facial recognition in terms of streamlining processes which require a lot of ID checks, like air travel, but I would only be OK with it if they implemented it within some parameters which should be enforced with regulation: - The identification step should be completely anonymized. I.e. the facial recognition step is completely black-box. When I buy my ticket, I submit a photo, and a token is produced which is shared with the airline, and they can compare this token with one which is produced when I show my face at checkin. Like with password storage, even if the facial recognition dataset were somehow compromised, it should not give attackers a way to link my face with my identity. And it should not be possible to type in my name and get to pictures of my face. - The dataset used to identify me should have a finite lifetime (i.e. from when I check in until the plane takes off) and should be verifiably destroyed afterwards. - It should be possible to possible to opt-out and identify myself by other means.
oyebenny 7y ago
Can we not link to "IFLS"? They're a horrible Facebook fad follower site with no real reverence for science. (-_-)
joe_the_user 7y ago
I'd be as worried about false positives and false negatives as I would be about losing privacy - and I would certainly be worried about that. Of course, the security of actual boarding passes seems extremely flimsy compared to the rest of airport security. The airlines could just take a picture and do no more verification at all, and wind-up with current security.
- 6nf 7y ago
  False positives is not a big deal, if two people check in under the same name it's easy to manually figure it out
  - stedaniels 7y ago
    I imagine the OP meant a nefarious third party using someone else's boarding pass?
    - 6nf 7y ago
      Is this not currently a problem too?
arno_app 7y ago
That biometric data is stored by a government is a whole other discussion in my eyes. If they provide a secure API that just let's you query through facial data and return which passenger from the company provided list it is I'm fine as long as the biometric data gets destroyed afterwards (the one provided to the API). But of course how can I know this as a passenger. I like the idea to make a process less painful but yeah it seems to have a lot of pitfalls
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  Just scrap identification and 100% of security legislation from the last 20 years and you could have a perfect and smooth flying experience. ---- Planes can make you and your whole family burn in a crash. So I guess that makes you cry really hard every time you board a plane, because that is really horrible. It could also be attacked by terrorists, but that probability is even lower by a few magnitudes. But since you already cried a lot, you just had enough and had to implement a huge dragnet? This makes so much sense! edit: I wish I could underline words on HN to underline the magnitude of magnitude.
Jerry2 7y ago
A related story that hasn't received much traction on HN: >US wants to use facial recognition on air travelers leaving the country https://qz.com/1598148/us-wants-to-use-facial-recognition-on-air-travelers-leaving-the-country/ https://qz.com/1598148/us-wants-to-use-facial-recognition-on...
- jjeaff 7y ago
  They already use it at customs when you are coming back to the US.
- Taniwha 7y ago
  wow a 97% success rate ... that means that 3% will be arrested for overstaying their visa on return .... The US is kind of unique in that it doesn't have immigration officers who stamp your passport when you leave ... so you have no proof that you have left ... it also means that there are no transit lounges in the US, you can't land in SFO from say Australia and get on a plane to London without passing through US customs and spending time and money getting a US visa (even an ESTA takes time and money) At the moment the US depends on airlines to get it right, it used to be that when you arrived they stapled a green bit of cardboard into your passport, sometimes the airlines would forget to collect it as you left, or lose it and people would end up getting arrested when they come back (a night or two in the cells and thrown on a plane back home). For a while there were kiosks in the departure lounge. Now days it's done electronically, and they still get it wrong occasionally, the error rate however is probably way below 3% at the moment. The horror stories from people caught this way mean that people from Oz/NZ often prefer to travel to Europe the other way around rather than risking US travel
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - madeofpalk 7y ago
    > mean that people from Oz/NZ often prefer to travel to Europe the other way around rather than risking US travel I mean, going via the US is 6 hours longer compared to going via Asia. Sydney > Dubai > London is ~23 hours. Sydney > LA > New York is ~23 hours, and then another 6 to get to London.
Calashle0202 7y ago
Meanwhile in Europe, we've been using this at passport control for years
ElliotH 7y ago
I tried this. It’s junk. So much slower than a boarding pass scan. I’ve seen good setups for this like at the UK border. This is not the same. Almost everyone got rejected and got looked at by staff, especially black people who the machine seemed incapable of recognizing. Children? No chance. I get it, there are privacy concerns which should rank higher, but you don’t even need to pull them out here. This is just useless bad tech.
- apexalpha 7y ago
  >I’ve seen good setups for this like at the UK border. This is not the same. I was just going to say I've done this in the UK. You put your passport on a scanner and look into the camera, took a full 5 seconds though, but since there are many more of these than border guards it's still faster.
  - vultour 7y ago
    Those don't use facial recognition, it's a bunch of border guards behind a wall manually evaluating if you match the data on the passport.
duckface 7y ago
can someone please explain calmly why the fear-mongering, the hysteria and use of the words terrify are justified about this?
- markdown 7y ago
  Read this twitter conversation between a passenger and Jetblue: https://twitter.com/mackenzief/status/1118509708673998848 https://twitter.com/mackenzief/status/1118509708673998848
bayesian_horse 7y ago
I have to admit my naivety on this, but: What exactly is the problem here? Both the airlines and the involved law enforcement have a right or even a duty to know who you are when you are boarding the plane. They also have facial recognition data, either from a passport photo or putting a camera in front of the check-in, and arguably they have a right to that. People walk around with their faces all the time. They post it on social media. Would it be a problem if a security guard lets you through a gate because he recognizes you? Is it more troublesome that all security guards of the airline now can recognize you at the gate? I think we need to be more precise about what exactly is spooking us and why. Using facial recognition for boarding security is not as big as a problem as facial recognition being used for law enforcement or whatever they do in China now. But that's a topic for legislation and regulation. If companies are prohibited from storing personal data without consent, that should be enough to stop almost any legal infringement. If such legislation is impossible, because your government is completely unaccountable, or because companies are unaccountable to such laws, then that is a much bigger problem than the potential for violations of privacy... With regards to privacy I keep coming back to the conclusion that it is more important and effective to improve and enforce regulations than to beat up on particular technologies.
- skohan 7y ago
  > I think we need to be more precise about what exactly is spooking us and why. What's spooking me is the normalization of facial recognition technology for identification without adequate public agreement over what the limits of its applications should be. A machine recognizing me is a lot different than a human recognizing me. If a machine can recognize me, there can be cameras posted at every street corner, and some organization can reconstruct my movements based on where and when my face is pinged by the system. It's sort of possible for humans with access to surveillance footage to do that, but the amount of human effort required to accomplish it makes it impossible to do at scale. An automated system could do this for everyone, always.
  - bayesian_horse 7y ago
    So it's still not the problem that a machine can recognize you, but rather that somebody is tracking and storing such recognitions. Which is an entirely different thing. The former is a technological reality. It's impossible to legislate away devices who can do that. Tracking and storing personal data on the other hand, is very much within the reach of regulation. The GDPR for example restricts this. Even if somebody has devices who can recognize you is not allowed to store and track data about such recognition incidences without your approval. In this particular case, they don't need your approval because the camera is used in lieu of a boarding pass, and the airline has every right and duty to know you are boarding right now. In case you are worried that the airline connects your travel patterns with other companies interested in other patterns, well, that works with a boarding pass or even a simple check mark on a pen-on-paper boarding list just fine.
swalsh 7y ago
In the us, we've successfully avoided a gun registry (with the exception of a few states) probably because gun ownership has such a direct connection with the idea of a potential tyrannical government. But these types of systems are going to be the true backbone of a tyrannical government. The gun community has successfully built a lobby organization to maintain these freedoms (I'd argue mostly through peer pressure.) Perhaps there's a model here that privacy advocates can replicate.
nerdbaggy 7y ago
How does Jet Blue know when you have opted out? By scanning your face, seeing you have opted out, and prompt for the actual boarding pass?
gumby 7y ago
Why do airlines even need to know your name (much less your gender — remember the press ballyhoo a few months ago when some airlines expanded their list from male and female)? I can see that they might want to know that each passenger has paid for the seat but that’s about it.
thb567 7y ago
So, many fears about surveillance infrastructure to be deployed for use cases like this one are already too late to the party. That's already done, the framework over all the apps are being deployed, like looking for faces to tell who's who

175 points by blahedo 7y ago

This sounds pretty insane indeed. How much should we be concerned about that? The gvt already has our image data, and knows our moves anyway right? Even without facial recognition, IDs and passports are asked when you travel, so the documentation of your travels already exists I assume?

ahelwer 7y ago
We should be very concerned, because this is obviously testing the waters before rolling out ubiquitous facial recognition. I honestly and earnestly believe that use of facial recognition technology should be banned in all its forms. The applications are limited and the downsides are massive.
- cocochanel 7y ago
  Could you please elaborate on the downsides? Gov't has your data since you were born, complete with your photos, IDs, you name it. What makes you think it's any different now?
  - Xylakant 7y ago
    Your government has your data, but this scheme would require that it gets mine, too.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ehnto 7y ago
    The difference is that ubiquitous facial recognition allows for near seamless tracking of individuals and explicitly without a warrant or their consent. It's an important milestone because it moves us from a "reasonable book keeping" level of tracking to full blown seamless tracking and again importantly, without our consent. To imagine it a bit more viscerally, imagine instead that the system had no cameras and instead required you to submit your daily movement report at the end of each day. An agent walks from door to door and you hand him your written report of exactly what you did today and that gets entered into the Government Saftey and Oversight Commission Database. What are they going to use all that data for? There are only a handful of good reasons, but a disproportionate list of bad reasons that explicitly limit freedom. Second to that. Would you be as comfortable going to a strip club or a fringe political gathering or a conference for a controversial topic if you knew you had to put it in your report? It has a chilling effect on freedom of movement and pushes fringe activities that are perfectly safe and legal into the darkness.
    - duckface 7y ago
      you people are pretty stupid. ATMs have tracking, point of point of sale has tracking, your phone, internet it's all tracked and linked back to you.
      - ehnto 7y ago
        No one said they didn't track anything already. But they don't have the full picture yet. Many people pay cash for things. Currently no tracking if you just visit somewhere and don't pay for anything. Not everyone has GPS enabled on their phone. Ubiquitous facial recognition fills in all of this missing data well enough, and without you doing anything but walking out your front door.
      - justwalt 7y ago
        I think you’re right. Maybe we should skip the facial recognition and install RFID tags behind our eyes, after all, they basically know all of that info already anyways.
- Scea91 7y ago
  In this particular case, the application of facial recognition improves airport security (against forged passports, sloppy security personnel, ...) while not probably requiring any additional information than what would already be provided by passports with biometric data. In my opinion, this is one of the few applications where it actually makes sense.
  - kelnos 7y ago
    You need to first ask if you're protecting against a threat that actually exists and is material. Is that the case? Do we see rampant use of forged ID to get onto planes? Do we see sloppy security personnel letting people through who shouldn't be allowed? I just don't see the evidence that this isn't a solution searching for a problem.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Do we know the instance count of forged passports vs the chances of spotting a fake when done by humans vs the computer? Sloppy security personnel is not something you address with tech, you address that with training and incentives.
nilskidoo 7y ago
For anyone without a private jet maybe. Does anyone seriously think the FAANG corporate boards will ever in their lives have to undergo this? If the feds wish to be paparazzi, then we should all give them something to really behold.
- ben_w 7y ago
  > Does anyone seriously think the FAANG corporate boards will ever in their lives have to undergo this? Yes, me. All of them will already be used to being hounded by paparazzi, and it would be very human for them to mistake that for normal. Two of them (Facebook and Apple) already use face recognition in their products.
  - nilskidoo 7y ago
    That is incredibly naive. Wealth is the only thing that guarantees anonymity.
    - ben_w 7y ago
      Anonymity? They get their own Wikipedia pages and personalised conspiracy theories. Even “mere” multimillionaires like my first boss after graduating got that plus endless personal fan letters.
      - keiferski 7y ago
        Anonymity is not the same as privacy. Mark Zuckerberg is known worldwide and has no ability to be anonymous. However aspects of his private life (his Facebook messages, for example) are far more private than the average person.
        ben_w 7y ago
        Zuckerberg’s password in June 2016 was “dadada”. That’s about as successful an attempt at privacy as the average person :)
fyfy18 7y ago
As long as the biometric data is held only by a government agency, and not shared with the airline, I don't have any issue with this. If this is implemented correctly, the airline should only get a response saying who the passenger is, or an error if they aren't recognised or aren't on the manifest for this flight. Passports already store biometric data, which I assume is also stored in some government database when you have it issued, so I don't see what's wrong with using that for something useful.
- geggam 7y ago
  Just as a note you still remember Trump is head of a large govt agency ? So is Putin and Kim Jong Un... If you feel safe with those folks driving the direction govts are headed ... well..

oceliker 7y ago

I think this is being blown a bit out of proportion. The government definitely has your passport photo in a database. And since this facial recognition is happening only at boarding gates of international flights, it’s totally plausible that CBP has an isolated system, where Jetblue operates the device but doesn’t get any of the data.

tdeck 7y ago
But this is a great way to test and refine facial recognition to make it ubiquitous, which has serious implications for the government's ability to track everyone cheaply and with little recourse.
- oceliker 7y ago
  I don’t think it provides a great way of testing and refining. The pictures are taken at a very controlled environment in this case; it doesn’t really generalize to CCTV. I don’t disagree with the argument regarding “normalizing” facial recognition in everyday life, though.
oedmarap 7y ago
I agree with you on this. Also, from the article: > "Once you take that high-quality photograph, why not run it against the FBI database? Why not run it against state databases of people with outstanding warrants?" I actually have no issue here. I would love it if law enforcement is aided in doing their job. I really don't want someone evading arrest for a recent violent crime or a person on the FBI's wanted list trying to board an aircraft with other passengers and succeeding. My issue is transparency on the data governance, security, and data residency of the entire system viz. where it's stored, who has access, and how is it accessed. OK equates to only the government having the database, secure access done remotely via API by the airline at check-in and boarding, a human present to verify any anomalies with the facial recognition & records access, and the boarding pass/ID/PP being used as a second factor if necessary. NOT OK equates to a private company running a central database, local copies of any database being stored by any airline, having facial recognition as the only option available, and having the data shared with any entity other than law enforcement.

purplezooey 7y ago

Ha. Seen your average US airport lately? Most look like a scene from the third world. Underfunded, dilapidated facilities coupled with cheapskate US carriers. Good luck with that.

ben_w 7y ago
Neither SFO nor JFK airport were as remotely dilapidated as Nairobi airport when I saw them.
- skohan 7y ago
  JFK does seem quite dated when comparing to most European capitals, or large Asian hubs. There are some high-standard modern terminals in the US too though.
  - chungleong 7y ago
    By "most European capitals", I presume you're excluding Paris :-)
    - skohan 7y ago
      I haven’t flown into Paris recently but there are plenty of exceptions: Berlin’s not beautiful either (though it’s one of my favorite airports). But still the standard in Europe seems higher in general than North America.
      - ben_w 7y ago
        I like Berlin Tegel, but Berlin Schönefeld always seemed to me to be its low-budget brother.
        skohan 7y ago
        Yeah I was speaking about Tegel. If you fly out of the main rotunda, it's great because every gate has its own security and bag drop so there's no long waits, even if it's busy. Schonefeld is like any other budget airport.

outside1234 7y ago

Presumably the government already has a list of people flying - do they really need your photo to do a scan against a list of warrants for your arrest? And do we not want them scanning that list against folks with a warrant for their arrest?

tommoor 7y ago

Last time I came into SFO through Global Entry there was no passport scan needed, just a quick look in the camera and it printed my receipt to enter the country. I've often thought that border control has the best time lapse of me aging

martin_ 7y ago
Interesting, how do you activate that flow? I landed at SFO last night and it prompted for me to insert my passport before it'd scan my face / take finger prints
- hyeonwho4 7y ago
  Global Entry is a TSA program you can apply for. The TSA charges a fee of 100 USD and runs an in person interview. Edit: those under investigation, warrants, or charged with crimes are not elligible. Neither are those with passports from outside major US allies (India Colombia UK Germany Panama Singapore Korea Switzerland Taiwan Mexico Canada)
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - iancarroll 7y ago
    Global Entry is not a TSA program and it normally requires a physical travel document to use the GE kiosks. Curious that there is now a facial recognition-only kiosk. Edit: looks like this in MIA? https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/global-entry-celebrates-10-years-expediting-international-travel https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/global-e...

mch82 7y ago

How much longer will we allow our freedoms to be eroded? People were flying without any photo ID until just a few years ago (except internationally). We’ve given up so much freedom & so much of what made air travel fun in exchange for so little. We need to stop letting people scare us into giving away our freedoms.

0x8BADF00D 7y ago
It’s security theatre at best; this technology will be used to monetize your biometric data, and you won’t get a single penny. Combine this with a social credit score system, and you will have a surveillance apparatus that is effectively unchecked.
ultrarunner 7y ago
> We’ve given up so much freedom Arguably it's merely been taken from us. There are plenty of who object, and the TSA is wildly unpopular. That makes little difference to the fact that the pace continues ever further. I don't mean to be defeatist, but I don't think a sternly worded letter has ever made much of a difference, and probably won't in the future. The only caveat is that when REAL ID takes effect and entire states full of people (e.g. Arizona) simply cannot fly, maybe enough complaints will be generated to come to some compromise. I'm not holding my breath, though.
- chrisbolt 7y ago
  > The only caveat is that when REAL ID takes effect and entire states full of people (e.g. Arizona) simply cannot fly Citation? https://www.dhs.gov/real-id https://www.dhs.gov/real-id shows Arizona in green.
  - coredog64 7y ago
    Next October, a standard AZDL will not be eligible. AZDOT has been sending out notices on how to get an ID valid for air travel, but I’ve been ignoring them because I already have a passport.
- 7y ago

big-deal 7y ago

Top comments suggest that the (U.S.) government certainly does this anway. Well guess what, now private global for-profit entities will trade databases with higher granularity and quality, around the world, in the most promiscuous ways imaginable. Ever seen pricing for mailing list leads, password databases, user id and home address mappings? Now add IMEI/GSM cellular identifiers. Now add location. Now add your face. All in commercial for-profit packages. Which includes private armies, investigators, credit ratings, and governments in other countries that choose to buy it up. And oh yeah, airlines certainly do business across borders. So think about this for a minute, before you say "big deal."

ryanthedev 7y ago

This is how it works. Airline takes multiple photos of you. Sends those photos along with flight context data. Over secure lines. To Homeland. They match photo to passport and passport info to flight manifest. All outside of the airlines infrastructure. Or at least should be.

ryanthedev 7y ago
If not passport could be drivers license. Or state id. Which would make sense because they don't allow certain state IDs to fly anymore. Everybody had to update.
- tjohns 7y ago
  These are the CBP "Biometric Exit" kisoks, which are only for international flights. Which means everybody on those flights will have a passport.

mattlondon 7y ago

So how does this work for international travelers? Presumably the US government does not have the entire world's passport photos? Or do they...? Pretty worrying if so ... time for some GDPR requests maybe ... I think at Gatwick in the UK they have a similar system where they take a photo of you as you enter security and it is then checked again at the gate. It does not work well if you are wearing glasses. I wonder if some certain styles of eye wear would make facial recognition significantly ineffective? Highly unsymmetrical with lenses opaque to IR etc.

ehnto 7y ago
There have been movements in fashion already that are trying to combat facial recognition with clothing, makeup and accessories. I always imagined that was why cyberpunk characters tended to dress their faces so bizarrely. Kind of like kids hiding beneath their hoodies.
blahedo 7y ago
They have the passport photos from all US passports, plus all non-US people who have entered the country through a legal port of entry. That should cover everyone who's flying out of the country, right?
- mirimir 7y ago
  Sure. Except for those who entered illegally. But I'm not sure how far they'd get even now. I'm guessing that checks on do-not-fly etc lists might already flag hem.

skilled 7y ago

I am guessing that the bigger concern here is that this is an 'enabler' tactic to expand facial recognition in other areas of our lives. And if this is the case, then there definitely needs to be some kind of ratification. Maybe this is unrelated, but it's starting to feel like every bad accident in this world is affecting us in this very strange way. For example, I was very surprised to find that Sri Lanka cut everyone off from social media "just like that". To think there are people with this kind of power seems a little frightening to say the least. But, what's even scarier is that these bombings and 'tragic' events tend to steer us in a very controlling direction. All of a sudden the government has an incentive to enforce more control over its citizens and society as a whole.

jMyles 7y ago
> All of a sudden the government has an incentive to enforce more control over its citizens and society as a whole. It's not sudden at all. The Reichstag fire [0] and the Reichstag Fire Decree [1], which is probably reasonably described as a pivotal part of the rise of Nazi Germany, demonstrate exactly the incentive you describe. At least as far back as 304 AD [2] - and probably further - people in power have noticed that they can exploit this incentive structure with a "false flag" attack. * 0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire * 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree * 2 https://books.google.co.za/books?id=RDqyIcSLJ0AC&pg=PA164&lpg=PA164&redir_esc=y https://books.google.co.za/books?id=RDqyIcSLJ0AC&pg=PA164&lp...
zizee 7y ago
This is not a new thing in American history, and probably predates America's existence: https://prospect.org/article/when-fear-threatens-freedom https://prospect.org/article/when-fear-threatens-freedom > The pattern of responding to threats by curtailing rights began early in American history. In 1798, when the future of the country was in doubt, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Act, which made it a crime to falsely criticize the government or government officials—men were sent to prison for speaking ill of certain individuals and decisions.
bayesian_horse 7y ago

tanilama 7y ago

That is great,

Chico11Kidlet 7y ago

If it keeps me safe, if it keeps the airplane from being flown into buildings, if it helps assure my safe passage to and from my destination and home to my family, then scan my face, and yours, as many times as needed. I have nothing to hide. As far as our liberty...this isn't the 1700s, Ben Franklin might have a different opinion today. I'd rather have the liberty of flying safely than it taken away by some terrorist hijackers using my life to prove a misguided point.

alkonaut 7y ago

If a private company says they'll take a picture of me at checkin and then verify that at boarding vs the same picture - then destroy the picture, I'm fine with that. It's a temporary storage of biometric data. I'm especially fine with it if I can opt to go for a paper passport instead. BUT If a private company uses some database, especially a centralized/government database, to do the same task - then it's absolutely dystopian.

PietdeVries 7y ago
Is the issue with the private company, or with the centralized/government instead? Suppose I start my own little company - at least on paper - can I submit a request to access this face-recognization database as well?
- chapium 7y ago
  The issue is a bit of both. Customer assumed private company had unauthorized personal data after the company performed the boarding pass checkin.
jacquesm 7y ago
What do you think are the chances that any of this data is actually destroyed?
- alkonaut 7y ago
  I think zero because as far as I understand this data is actually the second type - i.e. they aren't aquiring this data themselves, they are given access to the authorities' database.
skohan 7y ago
Yes I think there's a ton of potential benefit for facial recognition in terms of streamlining processes which require a lot of ID checks, like air travel, but I would only be OK with it if they implemented it within some parameters which should be enforced with regulation: - The identification step should be completely anonymized. I.e. the facial recognition step is completely black-box. When I buy my ticket, I submit a photo, and a token is produced which is shared with the airline, and they can compare this token with one which is produced when I show my face at checkin. Like with password storage, even if the facial recognition dataset were somehow compromised, it should not give attackers a way to link my face with my identity. And it should not be possible to type in my name and get to pictures of my face. - The dataset used to identify me should have a finite lifetime (i.e. from when I check in until the plane takes off) and should be verifiably destroyed afterwards. - It should be possible to possible to opt-out and identify myself by other means.

oyebenny 7y ago

Can we not link to "IFLS"? They're a horrible Facebook fad follower site with no real reverence for science. (-_-)

joe_the_user 7y ago

I'd be as worried about false positives and false negatives as I would be about losing privacy - and I would certainly be worried about that. Of course, the security of actual boarding passes seems extremely flimsy compared to the rest of airport security. The airlines could just take a picture and do no more verification at all, and wind-up with current security.

6nf 7y ago
False positives is not a big deal, if two people check in under the same name it's easy to manually figure it out
- stedaniels 7y ago
  I imagine the OP meant a nefarious third party using someone else's boarding pass?
  - 6nf 7y ago
    Is this not currently a problem too?

arno_app 7y ago

That biometric data is stored by a government is a whole other discussion in my eyes. If they provide a secure API that just let's you query through facial data and return which passenger from the company provided list it is I'm fine as long as the biometric data gets destroyed afterwards (the one provided to the API). But of course how can I know this as a passenger. I like the idea to make a process less painful but yeah it seems to have a lot of pitfalls

raxxorrax 7y ago
Just scrap identification and 100% of security legislation from the last 20 years and you could have a perfect and smooth flying experience. ---- Planes can make you and your whole family burn in a crash. So I guess that makes you cry really hard every time you board a plane, because that is really horrible. It could also be attacked by terrorists, but that probability is even lower by a few magnitudes. But since you already cried a lot, you just had enough and had to implement a huge dragnet? This makes so much sense! edit: I wish I could underline words on HN to underline the magnitude of magnitude.

Jerry2 7y ago

A related story that hasn't received much traction on HN: >US wants to use facial recognition on air travelers leaving the country https://qz.com/1598148/us-wants-to-use-facial-recognition-on-air-travelers-leaving-the-country/ https://qz.com/1598148/us-wants-to-use-facial-recognition-on...

jjeaff 7y ago
They already use it at customs when you are coming back to the US.
Taniwha 7y ago
wow a 97% success rate ... that means that 3% will be arrested for overstaying their visa on return .... The US is kind of unique in that it doesn't have immigration officers who stamp your passport when you leave ... so you have no proof that you have left ... it also means that there are no transit lounges in the US, you can't land in SFO from say Australia and get on a plane to London without passing through US customs and spending time and money getting a US visa (even an ESTA takes time and money) At the moment the US depends on airlines to get it right, it used to be that when you arrived they stapled a green bit of cardboard into your passport, sometimes the airlines would forget to collect it as you left, or lose it and people would end up getting arrested when they come back (a night or two in the cells and thrown on a plane back home). For a while there were kiosks in the departure lounge. Now days it's done electronically, and they still get it wrong occasionally, the error rate however is probably way below 3% at the moment. The horror stories from people caught this way mean that people from Oz/NZ often prefer to travel to Europe the other way around rather than risking US travel
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- madeofpalk 7y ago
  > mean that people from Oz/NZ often prefer to travel to Europe the other way around rather than risking US travel I mean, going via the US is 6 hours longer compared to going via Asia. Sydney > Dubai > London is ~23 hours. Sydney > LA > New York is ~23 hours, and then another 6 to get to London.

Calashle0202 7y ago

Meanwhile in Europe, we've been using this at passport control for years

ElliotH 7y ago

I tried this. It’s junk. So much slower than a boarding pass scan. I’ve seen good setups for this like at the UK border. This is not the same. Almost everyone got rejected and got looked at by staff, especially black people who the machine seemed incapable of recognizing. Children? No chance. I get it, there are privacy concerns which should rank higher, but you don’t even need to pull them out here. This is just useless bad tech.

apexalpha 7y ago
>I’ve seen good setups for this like at the UK border. This is not the same. I was just going to say I've done this in the UK. You put your passport on a scanner and look into the camera, took a full 5 seconds though, but since there are many more of these than border guards it's still faster.
- vultour 7y ago
  Those don't use facial recognition, it's a bunch of border guards behind a wall manually evaluating if you match the data on the passport.

duckface 7y ago

can someone please explain calmly why the fear-mongering, the hysteria and use of the words terrify are justified about this?

markdown 7y ago
Read this twitter conversation between a passenger and Jetblue: https://twitter.com/mackenzief/status/1118509708673998848 https://twitter.com/mackenzief/status/1118509708673998848

bayesian_horse 7y ago

I have to admit my naivety on this, but: What exactly is the problem here? Both the airlines and the involved law enforcement have a right or even a duty to know who you are when you are boarding the plane. They also have facial recognition data, either from a passport photo or putting a camera in front of the check-in, and arguably they have a right to that. People walk around with their faces all the time. They post it on social media. Would it be a problem if a security guard lets you through a gate because he recognizes you? Is it more troublesome that all security guards of the airline now can recognize you at the gate? I think we need to be more precise about what exactly is spooking us and why. Using facial recognition for boarding security is not as big as a problem as facial recognition being used for law enforcement or whatever they do in China now. But that's a topic for legislation and regulation. If companies are prohibited from storing personal data without consent, that should be enough to stop almost any legal infringement. If such legislation is impossible, because your government is completely unaccountable, or because companies are unaccountable to such laws, then that is a much bigger problem than the potential for violations of privacy... With regards to privacy I keep coming back to the conclusion that it is more important and effective to improve and enforce regulations than to beat up on particular technologies.

skohan 7y ago
> I think we need to be more precise about what exactly is spooking us and why. What's spooking me is the normalization of facial recognition technology for identification without adequate public agreement over what the limits of its applications should be. A machine recognizing me is a lot different than a human recognizing me. If a machine can recognize me, there can be cameras posted at every street corner, and some organization can reconstruct my movements based on where and when my face is pinged by the system. It's sort of possible for humans with access to surveillance footage to do that, but the amount of human effort required to accomplish it makes it impossible to do at scale. An automated system could do this for everyone, always.
- bayesian_horse 7y ago
  So it's still not the problem that a machine can recognize you, but rather that somebody is tracking and storing such recognitions. Which is an entirely different thing. The former is a technological reality. It's impossible to legislate away devices who can do that. Tracking and storing personal data on the other hand, is very much within the reach of regulation. The GDPR for example restricts this. Even if somebody has devices who can recognize you is not allowed to store and track data about such recognition incidences without your approval. In this particular case, they don't need your approval because the camera is used in lieu of a boarding pass, and the airline has every right and duty to know you are boarding right now. In case you are worried that the airline connects your travel patterns with other companies interested in other patterns, well, that works with a boarding pass or even a simple check mark on a pen-on-paper boarding list just fine.

swalsh 7y ago

In the us, we've successfully avoided a gun registry (with the exception of a few states) probably because gun ownership has such a direct connection with the idea of a potential tyrannical government. But these types of systems are going to be the true backbone of a tyrannical government. The gun community has successfully built a lobby organization to maintain these freedoms (I'd argue mostly through peer pressure.) Perhaps there's a model here that privacy advocates can replicate.

nerdbaggy 7y ago

How does Jet Blue know when you have opted out? By scanning your face, seeing you have opted out, and prompt for the actual boarding pass?

gumby 7y ago

Why do airlines even need to know your name (much less your gender — remember the press ballyhoo a few months ago when some airlines expanded their list from male and female)? I can see that they might want to know that each passenger has paid for the seat but that’s about it.

thb567 7y ago

So, many fears about surveillance infrastructure to be deployed for use cases like this one are already too late to the party. That's already done, the framework over all the apps are being deployed, like looking for faces to tell who's who