12 ms·
Very click-baity. Below the only part that actually relates to the title: The announcement came as we began to board. Last month, I was at Detroit’s Metro Airp
by pelario 7y ago
Very click-baity. Below the only part that actually relates to the title:
The announcement came as we began to board. Last month, I was at Detroit’s Metro Airport for a connecting flight to Southeast Asia. I listened as a Delta Air Lines staff member informed passengers that the boarding process would use facial recognition instead of passport scanners.
As a privacy-conscious person, I was uncomfortable boarding this way. I also knew I could opt out. Presumably, most of my fellow fliers did not: I didn't hear a single announcement alerting passengers how to avoid the face scanners.
To figure out how to do so, I had to leave the boarding line, speak with a Delta representative at their information desk, get back in line, then request a passport scan when it was my turn to board.
The rest of the article is a (not very novel) discussion about the risks and problems of facial recognition.
- aurbano 7y agoAgreed. What is the privacy concern of allowing face recognition if you are letting them scan your passport?
- kowdermeister 7y agoMaybe you don't want new data points on your face in a database.
- chii 7y agoNot sure if this happens in smaller airports, but if the passport scanner is automated, they already take a picture of you.
- rickycook 7y agothey have a copy of a static image that they likely already have access to. very different to a high res alternate image, from a different angle, with a different expression, in different lighting
- nimajneb 7y agoIt's only static if they aren't using AI to analyze the tons of images they have of you from security cameras etc. Google Photos can learn and search for faces of a person based on one confirmed face a person. I'm sure Facebook can as well. There's no reason to believe the Government or TSA is or isn't doing this.
- edwintorok 7y agoThe ePassport gates in at the UK border both scan your passport and take a picture to confirm that it is indeed you. Since they already had my picture in the database from the passport I did not consider this an invasion of my privacy, and (for now) they are opt-in instead of opt-out.
- beatgammit 7y agoWait, what do they take a picture of, your passport or you?
- matwood 7y agoYou scan your passport, lean in for a picture of your face, and hand a receipt to a person on your way out.
- edwintorok 7y agoYes, except instead of a receipt the gate just opened and I went through.
- bradstewart 7y agoBoth.
- gbrown 7y agoThere are already cameras everywhere though.
- bonestamp2 7y agoIt would make sense if that were true, but they already have his face. All he's really opting out of is them matching the one in their database when he's standing there. Maybe there's some value in that, but I agree the real value is not giving them your face to begin with and it's too late for that by the time you get to the gate... they've already got it.
- dawnerd 7y agoExactly, they already have your face in the system. Opting out isn't going to change that. Airports are likely already using facial recognition anyways. PDX had these installed not too long ago: https://www.dormakaba.com/us-en/solutions/products/entrance-systems/security-revolving-doors---interlocks/exit-lane-breach-control-407702 https://www.dormakaba.com/us-en/solutions/products/entrance-... What makes these interesting is they're getting stereoscopic imaging with multiple camera angles of video. That can potentially be used for some invasive tracking.
- femto113 7y agoThe distinction is nonsensical to me from a privacy standpoint. Your passport includes a picture of your face, anyone scanning your passport looks at that picture and your face to verify the passport is "you". I'm sure whatever is recorded by either process is essentially the same: a person with your face was in a particular place at a particular time.
- NeonTiger1992 7y agoSummed up my thoughts on this right here. Reading the article it doesn’t exactly detail what the headline explains and, as you said, selves into the ethical debate surrounding its use. Sigh.
- leethargo 7y agoIn particular, they did not say what was "not easy" about it. Where there delayed significantly?
- r3bl 7y agoShe just had to walk around a bit, presumably because the people at the gate weren't familiar with what to do when someone wants to opt-out. I guess that qualifies as "not easy", because it's a meaningless statement that can be justified by the slightest inconvenience.
- ptah 7y agorequiring opting out is a huge barrier as shown in behavioural economics and definitely makes it "not easy" especially if no one else is seen to be doing it
- dalbasal 7y agoYou can define it (imo) in two ways. One is by legible criteria: how long does it take & such. The other way is: how likely people are to do it. That's how a UI design would be measured. How many more people sign up if I remove the "age" field from a form. How many fewer people become organ donate if you need to register online vs tick (or untick) a box on your lisence form? The first way is how a regulator or judge would see it. The second is often the one that matters to how things develop practically. Eg how gdpr-ish consent actually affects realities of user control over their data. A common pattern is to concede the first, and rely on the second to make it irrelevant. Opt out is available, but the "UI" design ensures that it's rare.
- Vinnl 7y agoI think "easy" should at the very least include "you're notified that it's even possible".
- arkadiyt 7y agoAgreed about the clickbaity title, but what they were trying to imply is still true. Here's an example of Jake Williams attempting to opt-out of Delta facial scanning and immediately being scrutinized for it: https://twitter.com/MalwareJake/status/1144789516684877824 https://twitter.com/MalwareJake/status/1144789516684877824
- jddj 7y agoHe says there that the US is one of the few countries which doesn't do exit checks for immigration. Is that true? I hadn't thought about this. I know the Schengen zone does, as well as China and much of Latin America, but in my experience the UK doesn't. Does Australia/New Zealand/Canada (my feeling is that Australia doesn't)? What about Asian and African countries?
- strken 7y agoI had to go through a Border Force checkpoint[0] with facial recognition and a fingerprint scanner on the way out of Tullamarine last year. There may or may not have been a way to opt out. [0] they call it a "smartgate", presumably because it sounds less invasive than "biometric checkpoint", see https://www.abf.gov.au/entering-and-leaving-australia/smartgates/departures https://www.abf.gov.au/entering-and-leaving-australia/smartg...
- stilley2 7y agoCanada does not, at least not while traveling to the US
- UweSchmidt 7y agoGoing against implicit expectations of others and being the only one who does something is maybe the hardest thing humans can do. Opting out could risk holding up the boarding process, possibly missing the flight, unpleasant treatment by security and being pitted against the other passengers - all of it to opt out of something is clearly a dark pattern. All of this is very well understood by the people who designed this system. Articles like that and some of the comments in this thread at least give me an idea what opting out would take.
- CalRobert 7y agoI'm always sad when I'm the only one opting for a patdown at the airport after Defcon.
- krick 7y agoProbably that's because I didn't travel to USA yet, but I don't understand why it's sad. Why the hell would you opt for a patdown? What must be the default then?
- casefields 7y agoThese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_X-ray
- bambax 7y agoOh, it's "not very novel"? So it's completely unimportant then. That Western so-called civilization is sliding into a totalitarian dystopia while proclaiming it is protecting "freedom" is not an interesting topic of discussion, because... it has been discussed before!
- dwighttk 7y agoeven for a clickbait headline, "It Wasn't Easy" seems overkill. I opt out of the body scan every time and it sounds like the face scan is easier.
- tyingq 7y agoI don't see anything click baity. It was, indeed, not easy to opt out. And this is for someone that knew they could. " To figure out how to do so, I had to leave the boarding line, speak with a Delta representative at their information desk, get back in line, then request a passport scan when it was my turn to board" That is a process that is not easily discoverable. And the "opt out" isn't announced as an something that even exists.
- JadeNB 7y ago> I didn't hear a single announcement alerting passengers how to avoid the face scanners. > To figure out how to do so, I had to leave the boarding line, speak with a Delta representative at their information desk, get back in line, then request a passport scan when it was my turn to board. While I agree that it's made as easy as possible to go with the flow, and communicated less clearly than I'd like that you can avoid it, I think that this (the article's presentation, not your post) is disingenuous. I flew from DTW to SYX about 6 months ago, and saw signs (though no announcements) clearly indicating that you could opt out. I simply told the boarding agent when I came to the front of the line that I wanted to opt out; there was no need to leave the line. (In the interest of full disclosure, I don't know for sure that this works, because they were trying to speed up very delayed boarding and had given up on the facial scanning anyway, so they just waved me past without appearing even to notice that I asked.)
- Amir6 7y agoI wish you would summarize every article on HN because as one of the only articles I read this week (since as you mentioned it really was click-baity), my interpretation was pretty much the same.