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Facial Recognition Scanners To Replace Boarding Passes, No Effective Opt-Out

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday April 23 2019, @04:51PM   Printer-friendly
from the 1984-is-a-warning-not-a-guideline dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

A conversation between a passenger and an airline has gone viral, largely because people find it intensely creepy.

MacKenzie Fegan went to the airport last week. As with normal flights, she was expecting at some point to present her boarding card in order to get on her plane. However, she found all she had to do was look at a camera, and at no point was asked for her pass.

As convenient as that sounds, she had questions, which she put to the airline, JetBlue, in a now-viral thread.

I just boarded an international @JetBlue flight. Instead of scanning my boarding pass or handing over my passport, I looked into a camera before being allowed down the jet bridge. Did facial recognition replace boarding passes, unbeknownst to me? Did I consent to this?
— MacKenzie Fegan (@mackenzief) April 17, 2019

Fegan had several pressing follow-up questions, such as "how" and "who exactly has my face on record?".

"Presumably these facial recognition scanners are matching my image to something in order to verify my identity," she wrote. "How does JetBlue know what I look like?"

So how concerned should we be that companies like JetBlue have access to this data?

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday April 24 2019, @05:32PM (1 child)

    by legont (4179) on Wednesday April 24 2019, @05:32PM (#834416)

    Your primary fault is to assume that money savings here are driven by free competition while it is as far away from free as possibly could be.

    Level of security is mandated by the government and once automated the government will mandate more; even more than was saved. Airlines on the other hand are complacent because they take percentage of the security costs to their profits and move the total to customers. There is no competition here, but a nice bonus for all of them.

    --
    "Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday April 24 2019, @05:43PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday April 24 2019, @05:43PM (#834420)

    *headdesk*
    *headdesk*
    Airlines are trying to save money by automating away their gate agents, which only do (symbolic) ID checks.
    TSA is an ever-expanding mess, added as a fee on your ticket.

    STOP conflating the two, FFS!