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The new report, which was released Thursday, comes on the heels of a related 2016 report showing that half of Americans’ faces are already in a facial recognition database.
“As currently envisioned, the program represents a serious escalation of biometric scanning of Americans, and there are no codified rules that constrain it,” the report concludes.
In July 2017, Ars reported that facial-scanning pilot programs are already underway in international departure airports at six American airports—Boston, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, New York City, and Washington, DC. More are set to expand next year. In a recent privacy assessment issued one month earlier, DHS noted that the “only way for an individual to ensure he or she is not subject to collection of biometric information when traveling internationally is to refrain from traveling.”
“We’re wondering if this is the best use of a billion dollars?” [Laura Moy, a Georgetown law professor and one of the report's authors] said. “We’ve done the research and we think the answer to that question is ‘no.’”
“When American citizens travel by air, they should not have to choose between privacy and security,” he said. “The implementation of DHS facial scanning program for US citizens leaving the country raises a number of questions.”
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 21 2018, @10:34PM
If the big corporates have deals with the local police, FBI, etc they could be funneling all their surveillance camera data to government agencies to be analyzed and used for facial recognition. Even though I haven't personally heard any stories of it yet, I have been assuming it was in place since visiting a loss prevention office in a major corporate store about 10 years ago. Combined with that guy from North Carolina who ran off with the 15 year old student to California and how easily they managed facial recognition on them from one of the stores (a Walmart?) and you can assume your face is being analyzed daily, even if the current level of coverage is crap.
America as either a land of the free or a home of the brave has been dead since at least a few years after 9/11, and depending on what your 'pivotal change' is, anywhere from the 1990s back to the 1780s.