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Homeland Security wants airport face scans for US citizens
Homeland Security is joining the ranks of government agencies pushing for wider use of facial recognition for US travelers. The department has proposed that US citizens, not just visa holders and visitors, should go through a mandatory facial recognition check when they enter or leave the country. This would ostensibly help officials catch terrorists using stolen travel documents to move about. The existing rules specifically exempt citizens and permanent residents from face scans.
It won't surprise you to hear that civil rights advocates object to the potential expansion. ACLU Senior Policy Analyst Jay Stanley said in a statement that the government was "reneging" on a longstanding promise to spare citizens from this "intrusive surveillance technology." He also contended that this was an unfair burden on people using their "constitutional right to travel," and pointed to abuses of power, data breaches and potential bias as strong reasons to avoid expanding use of the technology.
Via: TechCrunch
(Score: 5, Touché) by DannyB on Tuesday December 03 2019, @02:45PM (20 children)
At least Homeland Security isn't asking for a drop of blood to enter and exit the country. So it's okay and nobody should complain.
It's for your own good. Homeland Security is protecting you from bad people. From bad people who are against our way of life. Against our constitution and democracy. Against our freedom of movement and travel.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Tuesday December 03 2019, @03:10PM (5 children)
So, when will they introduce a mandatory physical when entering and leaving? Cannot have no potentially sick people around here. Those sick are bad because they are sick. Any good citizen is not sick. And, any sick visitor will only create an inappropriate burden on our fantastic care system. The sick must be identified and handled appropriately.
Be Well!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Tuesday December 03 2019, @04:05PM (2 children)
Wonder how they're going to deal with identical twins, since facial recognition can't tell siblings apart all that reliably.
I'll laugh when they start doing DNA tests - people who have had their blood marrow wiped out and received donor blood marrow won't have the same DNA in their blood sample as their cheek swab or spit.
But don't worry - Uncle Sam just wants some face time with you. And you've just given another reason for people to vacation elsewhere, saving fuel and reducing greenhouse gases.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday December 03 2019, @06:00PM (1 child)
Facial recognition is less than 99% effective already, so of the 2.7 million passengers who fly daily, expect more than 300,000 "bad scans." They will have to deal with the limitations of the technology, and decide how important it is to detain certain people based on face + name. For my friend named Abourched, facial recognition would be a plus - under name only scrutiny she was detained over half the time she flew, and she flew a lot - enough so that she legally changed her name to put an end to the nonsense. Now for my friend named Alkaladi - it's just lucky for him that he doesn't fly, and again, a facial recognition component to security could be a huge benefit for him.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:09PM
that is not how math works. 99% leaving 1% of 3mil is 30k, not 300k, which would be a 10% false positive.
also "worse than 99%" - type I or II? But I mean, order of magnitude already ...
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday December 03 2019, @05:03PM (1 child)
Being sick makes people bad? So that means we should have national healthcare, right? :)
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 03 2019, @06:51PM
In this present day, sadly, a more likely scenario . . .
Being bad makes people sick.
Therefore we cannot let them into the country.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 03 2019, @03:25PM (13 children)
But look at all the terrorist plots thwarted by the brave men and women of the TSA! All zero of them! Do you really want to risk one of those plots succeeding?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 03 2019, @05:27PM (11 children)
All zero of them!
You know we really don't know that. Send somebody out to count the people that disappear behind the closed door, never to been seen again. I see no reason for them to broadcast the truth about their success rates. In fact, making them look incompetent might encourage the bad guys to come out of hiding. I wouldn't trust any statistics coming out of this department. They are essentially saying, "Come out, come out, wherever you are."
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @05:37PM
Yes. The third brother is not bragging once or twice, 90% are being sold straight to the toothpaste factory for pressure cooperation.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday December 03 2019, @05:42PM (3 children)
15+ years and not a single perp walk? Every cop agency in the US wants to do those on occasion to show the world that they're doing something.
Right now, the justification for the Department of Homeland Security's programs are basically identical to the justification for a tiger-repelling rock [youtube.com].
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @05:49PM
Not to cops: https://kknews.cc/zh-hk/digital/m3p44bz.html [kknews.cc]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday December 04 2019, @07:18AM (1 child)
Yeah, speaking of tigers, when was the last airline hijacking on American soil? We have a nice opaque system, and not too many people seem to mind. I wish we could use the TSA to control the drunks and wackos that make it to the gate before they get on the plane. If not a face scan, a breathalyzer [dailymail.co.uk].
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @09:22AM
Before we secured the cockpit doors and changed protocol such that they won't open them if there's an attempted hijacking, and before citizens were willing to stop anyone who attempts to hijack the plane.
Those are the only things that we need, and they don't violate anyone's liberties.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday December 03 2019, @09:26PM (4 children)
If they're constantly foiling dastardly plots by evil super villains they would shout about it from the rooftops, because that's one way you get your budget increased.
Of course Homeland Security's problem is that the US has lots and lots of secret police forces, all competing for their slice of the pie and they don't seem to have much to show for the $50 billion or so they cost.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 03 2019, @09:55PM (3 children)
On the contrary. "Failure" is the excuse they use to get increased funding and to fatten up the front office. Not catching 'terrorists'? Mo money! And it makes the enemy feel secure in his adversary's "incompetence", so they get careless. If the TSA is really interested in catching terrorists, making them simply disappear with little media fanfare is probably the most effective.
Hardly matters. The TSA is not an election issue. SNAFU
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday December 03 2019, @09:59PM (1 child)
Isn't it? Wow, it really should be.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:29PM
It's merely one of many things that should be. Civil rights issues in general don't motivate people to look beyond spoon fed mass media for their candidates. And they don't pay close enough attention to the tax ripoffs being used to bail out the banks instead of reinforcing our safety nets and maintaining infrastructure, even with the claim that they vote with their wallets. The TV says, "vote for So-N-So", and everybody does.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 04 2019, @02:45PM
The real power, then, lies in getting to decide that something isn't an election issue.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @07:17AM
You're not considering the actual scenario. Keep in mind that if they get somebody this would be an actual bad guy with genuine bad guy things. This is not random guy with random irrelevant item getting irrelevantly flagged and badgered. We are talking about a bad guy who wants to make things go boom and deflate some meat sacks. When the scanner alerts the agent to something and he asks him to step aside, this is not where Mr. Aloha Snackbar goes quietly and is never heard from again. No no no, he was looking forward to his 72 virgins and 80,000 servants being thrust upon him within the next few hours. You don't get those sitting in lockup for years. He'd resort to well conceived plan 2: freak out and try to get Snackbar'd as quickly as possible.
This would result in everybody within a hundred meters whipping out their cameras and recording the ruckus. It'd be on social media within about a minute of the event starting, and it'd be on the news about 30 minutes later. This is also assuming the TSA doesn't have a plan for when they find actual bad guy things, which is probably wrong. I'd assume their actual procedure would not be to have some random TSA guy do anything but instead wave Mr. Skackbar on through while also sending off a silent red alert to have armed police and bomb guys come in, in force. Same result in that case, only even more visible and even more likely to get Snackbar'd.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Tuesday December 03 2019, @09:46PM
That is a 100% success rate! It cannot get any better than that. See, 100% success rate! The TSA is working at 100%!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 03 2019, @03:55PM (15 children)
I'm very much aware of how seat belt laws were foisted upon us. Initially, a seatbelt violation could not be ticketed, at all. Instead, if you were pulled over for speeding, and you weren't wearing the belt, the LEO noted that on the ticket, and your speeding fine was bumped up 10 to 25 bucks. Then, you could be ticketed for the seat belt separately, but it wasn't a "primary" violation. That is, you had to be doing something else to get pulled over, but you would be ticketed for lack of a seatbelt after being pulled over. Then, the day came when they started stopping people for no other reason than, the cop couldn't see your seatbelt strap across your shoulder.
It may take a decade, maybe two, but everyone will have to submit to the government's demands, eventually.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Codesmith on Tuesday December 03 2019, @04:13PM (11 children)
Whaaaa?
It's pretty much a given that the biometric scans are part of governement big data, but I cannot seem to make the leap from a change regarding security theatre to laws regarding safe operation of a motor vehicle.
Pro utilitate hominum.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @04:34PM
You can fight against this stuff all you want, and you might win this time. But it always moves in one direction, one small step at a time. If it gets turned away this time, it will come up again, more silently next time. Government and big companies have learned that you can get anything you want as long as you do it in small enough steps.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday December 03 2019, @04:59PM (6 children)
I understand what Runaway means. You're tying the two too tightly. He's just making an analogy. I make analogies, and people get too specific and mix the two. Don't do that.
The point is called "incrementalism". Slowly but surely the govt. will get more and more into our lives and businesses.
Read "1984". I fear that such books numb many people. Kind of, "just accept it, you can't stop it". We CAN stop it if we write to our congress representatives. We see in the news that cities (Portland, OR), states (CA), countries (much of EU), are passing personal privacy laws, protecting citizens.
The 4th Amendment to the USA's Constitution says we can not be subjected to unreasonable search. "...[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation,..."
MY interpretation is simple: in 1789 (or whenever it was) they obviously didn't have digital anything, barely lightning rods. The 4th amendment includes everything a person would have had, including their information: "papers, and effects", so nothing should be searchable by the govt. without proper "due process". If they had digital "stuff", biometric data, etc., in 1789, they would have included that too.
That said, I'm all for getting the "bad people", but not at the expense of harming innocent people in any way.
If the US People, through the Congress, want to amend the Constitution and Bill of Rights (amendments), then they may do so. But so far, the Constitution and Bill of Rights are being violated criminally (IMHO).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:20PM (3 children)
If you're all for getting the bad people here's the question, then.... What is the harm of having facial recognition? Who is actually being harmed in the process and how? What is the value of that harm against what potential benefit to society? The latter is often the test the Supreme Court uses when considering whether such matters are illegal.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:15PM (1 child)
Likewise, what is the ‘harm’ in reading someone’s diary, searching someone’s house, or any other unreasonable search?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 04 2019, @03:32AM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday December 04 2019, @02:22PM
In pre-Hitler Germany I guess there were plenty of people thinking: "What is the harm in letting the authorities know that I'm Jew?"
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Codesmith on Tuesday December 03 2019, @09:09PM
Oh I get that Runaway is making an analogy, but it's a very poor one.
One is continual goverment creep into areas they don't need to go, the other is a realisation that humans are poor judges of risk and therefore an adjustment of law is for the societal good.
Pro utilitate hominum.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday December 04 2019, @01:35AM
The ,key word is unreasonable. Just need the Supreme Court to rule that all searches are reasonable and your 4th amendment can join the others that have been changed by the court.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @07:14PM (2 children)
"laws regarding safe operation of a motor vehicle."
worry about your own safety, you fucking state socialist authoritarian bootlicker.
(Score: 1, Troll) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday December 03 2019, @09:31PM (1 child)
It amazes me sometimes how many morons manage to blunder their way onto the Internet, despite their obvious inability to think properly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:47PM
I blame AOL.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 03 2019, @05:19PM
I remember the same thing with the national speed limit, which started out voluntary, until nobody wanted it.
But, whatever, when there is a sufficient demand the government can be turned pretty submissive also. There's no one to blame but the people who do the voting.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 03 2019, @05:45PM (1 child)
I would call those motorized shoulder strap mounts from 30 years ago a foisting, and would certainly prefer that the law stay out of seatbelt usage, but frankly, only a fool would routinely refuse that particular guard against one of the biggest underappreciated dangers of daily life, that being serious injury or death from an automobile accident. But let Darwin Award wannabes have their fun, there really are too many people in the world.
Do note that many government impositions are gone. No more national 55 mph speed limit or motorized seatbelts. The goofier pollution prevention measures of the late 1970s have been largely superseded. Cars are far safer than they were 60 years ago.
And, try to better appreciate that many corporations are sociopathic, and will cost millions of other peoples' money and even lives, to save a few cents. You know, like GM did with their infamous ignition switch. We have a hell of a time keeping them corralled. Got to have referees, and bad and flawed though they are, our government mostly does a reasonable job of that. Still, we, the people, have to keep a close watch on government, and bust them hard when they fall into regulatory capture or start thinking they're above the law.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by toddestan on Wednesday December 04 2019, @04:13AM
Motorized seatbelts were actually ended by another government regulation - the requirement that all vehicles have airbags. In the late 80's, the government mandated that all cars must have some kind of passive restraint system (where passive here means that the driver/passenger doesn't have to actively do something to make it work, such as buckling a seatbelt). Airbags were one way of complying, and motorized belts was another way of complying, and there may have been a couple of other more exotic solutions. However, since automatic seat belts were cheapest and most easily implemented that's what most manufacturers went with.
People hated the motorized seatbelts, and most implementations were half-assed in the sense they were only the shoulder belt which meant the lap belt still had to be buckled. And if one got into an accident with only the shoulder strap the results could be ugly. So for the 1995 model year the government decreed that the only solution was to use airbags. Cars could still have motorized seatbelts, but with no regulations requiring them, virtually all cars dropped the automatic seatbelts after 1995.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ilsa on Tuesday December 03 2019, @03:57PM
It's unfortunate because I can see how this technology *would* help things like passport fraud, etc. Your passport is basically just a paper version of a database record. You can fake a passport but it's (ostensibly) more difficult to modify the database record, so having your picture on file and easily scannable will take a lot of the drudgery out of password checks.
But given HS and the TSA already have a long and cherished history of abuse of power, this definitely needs to be fought tooth and nail.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @04:10PM (2 children)
I flew back into the US from London about ten years ago and they already had this. I don’t recall for sure, but I think it was PHX. Little terminals with mandatory face scans. You learn about the requirement as you approach customs. Didn’t matter if you were a citizen or not, everybody got scanned.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:07PM (1 child)
That may not have been facial recognition, that may have been only facial capture. Just taking a photo, and storing it. 15 years ago, the technology to do recognition really didn't exist. 12 years ago, the best had accurracies of about 90%, and needed a lot of help to reach that level. Such as, needed the faces all at the same angle and distance, no looking off to the side, tilting of the head or leaning forward or back, and needed as near identical lighting conditions as possible. A simple change such as putting on glasses or facial hair could completely fool them. You may have noticed that when posing for a driver's license photo, officials want glasses removed? Over the next few years, we saw progress, with such things as digital cameras that could detect faces, but they still couldn't recognize individuals.
Law enforcement has been hankering for facial recognition for decades. Seem to think it'll be near infallible, and will make their jobs much easier. They aren't the least concerned that it can be abused to spy upon the movements of the innocent. Nor do they appreciate the massive difficulties in finding matches to databases of millions. When comparing most any individual's face to a million faces, there will be several hundred very close matches. 99.99% accuracy is still 100 out of 1 million. Then to add to the difficulties, the stored photos can be of very poor quality, just too low resolution and grainy, barely better than thumbnails, yet they expect AI to display practically magical ability and make the match anyway.
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Wednesday December 04 2019, @09:29AM
In the UK we have had biometric passports for at least 6 years.
I came back from holiday about 6 years ago and went through the facial recognition gate. You put your passport in a scanner (RFID) and stood in a booth for a second. The gate would open if your face match's the one on the passport. No customs officers involved.
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @04:27PM (2 children)
mandatory fecal recognition
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @05:04PM
They'll have to mount the scanners a lot lower.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:21PM
Been watching the new season of Rick and Morty?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 03 2019, @05:11PM (1 child)
Freedom of movement is a human right, well really, an essential freedom. It would have to be inviolable to be a right.. All our rights are expressed through the laws of physics.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @04:12AM
Well, you see, that only means you have a right to walk, or at least until the courts determine that to be a privilege as well. The Constitution, despite saying no such thing, allows the government to take over all other forms of transportation and force you to surrender whatever rights they deem fit in order for you to be able to make use of them. It's a totally reasonable interpretation of the Constitution, I'm sure you'll agree.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @06:35PM (5 children)
Has there been any work done on how easy it is to fool facial recognition with a mask? If we implement this nation wide, will we end up with cheap masks that can be 3D printed that can fool the technology? Apple's facial recognition can't tell a face from a picture.
I for one welcome our new mission impossible future of people running around pulling off masks revealing who they really are, or maybe, a second mask! The possibilities!!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 03 2019, @06:53PM (1 child)
Since China is ahead of us on this, we will get the benefits of their experience in how to detect and defeat attempts at evading facial recognition. Thanks to the Chinese.
Maybe they'll patent their methods of oppression and license them to us.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 2, Touché) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 03 2019, @10:00PM
Maybe they'll patent their methods
Cool! Then we can rip them off for a change... /s
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 03 2019, @08:16PM (2 children)
Yes; lots of work; it's pretty easy to fool facial recognition with makeup or masks, but human officials tend to pull mask-wearers aside in airports, and there are many other trackable traits that you exhibit. Gait, weight, iris, foot impression/weighting, and more importantly, continuity of physical presence - ie. you can't leave your body, and however you reconform it, you're lugging *something* around, and disjoint path sections can be joined pretty easily in practice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @07:31AM
+++ on the other tertiary measurements. People seem to forget in the age of the internet that just because something isn't in the news doesn't mean it's not happening.
For instance after graduating one of the job offers I had was working on some pretty cool tech they were using to detect drug runners. Drug running results in an abnormal opacity and weight. These things can be detected by bouncing ultrasonic waves off the boats. Similar technologies can also be used on the ground to detect abnormalities in e.g. vehicles. Adapting somewhat similar concepts for uniquely identifying humans when you have the 'home field advantage' would be ultra trivial.
Governments used to have a massive confidential tech advantage over the public standard. For instance think about the fact that the SR-71 blackbird [wikipedia.org] was in the skies in 1964! Literally gives me goose bumps to think about what that bird can do, compared to what was publicly thought to be 'cutting edge' at the time. But, in my opinion, that gap has diminished dramatically. I don't think our things like F-35 fuckups (interestingly the blackbird was also made by the same company) is just some sort of Sun Tzu 4D chess pretending to be incompetent game. However, governments still have a huge money advantage. And so something you could imagine being done with basic technology but only at absurd and irrational cost? Yeah, I think there's a pretty good chance we're doing it. And that encompasses a lot of things.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday December 04 2019, @02:33PM
Breaking news: Terrorists are taking astral projection courses! ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 04 2019, @04:09AM
Treacherous pieces of human garbage ask people to surrender more privacy and freedom so that they can conduct even more unconstitutional surveillance on the populace, in exchange for an imaginary increase in security against non-government bad actors and a much more real decrease in security against government criminals.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Wednesday December 04 2019, @12:50PM
Still haven't heard how much money I get for every hour of mine that is wasted if I am falsely identified.
Also haven't heard how given the current laws against epsteining, epstein is still able to epstein.
Which is to say, israeli spies will not be affected by this new system and can continue their important work protecting rapists and human traffickers.
AIPAC will handle designation of people as terrorists, which will include everyone who is not ok with funding the genocide of the palestinians, invasion of syria and permanent trump presidency.
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