That said, even as a libertarian, privacy-conscious person, I'm not sure I have a problem with exit controls like this. It's important to know who is crossing the border, in both directions.

But why do they even need the photo? Presumably the name is already on the ticket... surely they can detect overstays from names + address alone, not just photos?

Why?

And if there exists an important reason to know that someone is exiting the country does that same criterion not also apply to exiting a state or city or neighborhood?

I am not being sarcastic; I am genuinely unable to come up with a reason it's important to track who leaves almost any place, except in highly unusual cases (e.g. "OK guys, chatmasta has gone; let's get to work planning the surprise party for when he gets back")

The airlines are giving out all the information, that's why there is no need to do an exit passport control.

From the US? I can't think of any outgoing passport control at all; not by land in a private vehicle, nor by boat.

So France has basically no idea who shows up from Germany or leaves via Belgium. The countries on the external borders are supposed to handle all that.

Now I suppose it's possible there is a lot of data exchanged in real time and so on, but it's also possible that is a complete mess and nobody really knows anything, especially about citizens (GDPR).

I have not crossed that many non-Schengen land borders, but as far as I remember it was the same every time, when going from France to England through the channel, Belgium to England by train, France to Switzerland (before Switzerland joined Schengen) and Canada to the US.

I have been to a few airports where you explicitly clear US customs at the departing airport before leaving for the US — Vancouver, BC and Dublin Shannon come to mind.

If you've overstayed your automatic 90-day Schengen area travel visa, a common hack for backpackers and such is to intentionally leave the Schengen area from someplace like France that's generally less strict about counting exact days than many other EU countries.

To be fair, I don't have much experience flying from the Schengen area to non-Schengen area non-US countries. It's totally possible this is all rigamarole that the US government pressures other countries to do.

I have heard of friends of friends who overstayed a visa and get found out on the exit gate (usually bringing a lawyer/embassy official to talk through things). This can lead to a (temporary?) travel ban to Germany and a fine.

And those maximum visit lengths are counted on an annual basis. So you can only visit the US 179 days out of 365.

So they need to know when you came in and when you left. It's not good enough to just leave and not tell anyone.

But institutions like governments only “see” via data collection, and in general are happy to collect whatever is technically and socially feasible, and people involved in setting up databases seldom stop to think about the risks or trade-offs involved in collecting various types of data, or whether that data is meaningful or useful. https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-call...

Staying for more than six months is usually one of the main measures to determine if one is resident and should pay taxes in the country, so there is at least a very good reason (although I don't know how much this applies to the USA specifically).

Finding people who rob banks at some point and punishing them is of great interest to people fearful of robbers who like disrupting robbers’ lives for no practical purpose because they gain sadistic satisfaction from cruelly exercising power over other people.

You punish a robber ostensibly to stop them from robbing again, lest you end up the victim of a robbery. What does being the victim of someone's unlawful presence even mean?

There is nothing unique about the US in that regard. Most countries have a limit on how long you can visit.

This isn't always a good thing, of course, as there's less due process involved in handling such situations. Unlawful entry is a misdemeanor, lying to a border guard is a crime, and unlawful re-entry after deportation can be, also.

[1] https://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2017/mar/15/fl...

I think your "who is hurt" approach is weak though.

If a country can't enforce its own laws - or worse selectively enforces them - no one is obviously "hurt" but it erodes trust in the systems and process itself. It leaves everything up to the judgement of the people on the ground and damages the concept of equality under the law. It's a dangerous game to play.

I was suggesting one has a clear victim and the other doesn't so it may not be directly comparable. The "who's hurt" question was something I'm curious the consensus answer to rather than an excuse for not enforcing the law.

Not saying one way or another, but the argument is that ICE was only formed 16 years ago and that the U.S. was not 'overrun' before then. The Border Patrol etc. would still remain, just the Stasi-like tactics of removing people from their homes in the middle of the night and holding people in cages would disappear.

At least that's how I've heard the argument.

Saying "only formed 16 years ago" is only right among the "well, actually" crowd.

The difference in 'effectiveness' is sort of like the difference between the reach of the LAPD intelligence arm vs the CIA.

I believe the US exit controls are currently based on airline passenger manifests (not entry databases of other countries).

Also de facto limitations in highly violent places like Syria, parts of Iraq, Somalia et al, but I assume you were referring to a de jure right

With this development of technology, it becomes possible to even check who is crossing your neighborhood, and you may lose your freedom inside your own country, if a government decided to go in that direction

Obviously a great country to emulate.

This happened to me leaving London and it was a lot of fuss over nothing. I (American) had given my forwarding travel plans to the border agent upon arrival and I didn't notice but she marked my passport with a visa for an exact stay (just the weekend). Except she mistakenly wrote my exit date a day early. It took quite a bit of explaining to convince them not to put a giant "DEPORTED" stamp in my passport and even though they eventually believed me that it was a clerical mistake they definitely kept track in their system because I was questioned about it several months later when I went to the Falkland Islands.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Anyway, I think facial recognition makes sense from a security perspective, as an additional layer of defense. You can make assumptions about what faces you expect to see from the passports that are scheduled to fly. If you see an unknown face in the boarding area, it's reasonable to flag that person for further review.

*US citizens flying within the states.

- Hannibal Buress

Casual article on it: https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/how-to-get-on-a-pla...

ADDED: It appears that as of Oct 1 2020, this sort of exception will no longer be possible.

It doesn't explicitly say "no exceptions" but the plain text is certainly that you will need appropriate ID (Real ID/passport/etc.) to go through TSA when Real ID requirement fully kicks in.

The inspection is not a big deal and they are prepared for this situation. It’s a shame that the laws that control this are classified (cf Gilmore v Gonzalez) so we can’t know what the actual rules are.

It’s a “solution” in search of a problem.

According to quick search there’s no specific resolution requirement for the image in biometric passport, but size should be min 12kB to have recognizable image.

https://readid.com/blog/face-images-in-ePassports

I noticed that these gates were quite slow ID'ing me the first couple of times I went through them but now I hardly have the time to see my face flash on the screen before the gates open. Maybe there's a human check on initial passes. Either that or their code has gotten way better or they store data that helps matching after a few uses.

I'm also flying to Kenya and other E. African countries so it wouldn't be surprising if they flagged me.

My guess is the app probably just approved anyone or nearly anyone. It's unlikely someone without a boarding pass would try to get on and it's likely that anyone with a boarding pass who got disapproved would be pissed.

Or who knows, maybe homeland security did a mechanical Turk and had someone at the other end looking at faces and checking off names.

No not always, only recently.

> I don't really see what the problem would be here?

You’re kidding right? There’s multiple privacy problems. Sounds like you either benefit from mass surveillance or have been conditioned to it.

No, not kidding.

There's a legitimate government interest in identifying people entering and leaving a country. This isn't Facebook, or even cameras on street corners -- this is a government responsible for enforcing legitimate immigration policies at a legitimate location (the border) for a wide variety of reasons (safety, economic, etc.), which absolutely requires knowing who is who.

I don't know any serious thinkers who claim otherwise.

And I don't see a particularly big difference between getting my photo taken for official ID's every few years (passport, driver's license, visas, etc.) and having it taken when I need to prove my identity with one of those.

The government already has photos of me. They already know my flight. How could it possibly affect my privacy that they also have a photo of me when I get on the plane?

I'm just not seeing it.

(Unless you're opposed to the whole concept of passports and photo ID's in general, but that would be a pretty radical position.)

And I'd wager the reason they're doing this is because while a human can make a decent determination of whether the photo matches the person in front of them, computers need a larger sample to get the error rate low enough for broad use. That's great for CBP and airlines that can employ fewer personnel, and great for travelers who can breeze throughª boarding and customs. But imagine how it will go when you are one of those 0.1% errors and the system refuses to let you in.

ªassuming companies/govts decide to increase throughput instead of decreasing cost, or that it's such an improvement that it can do both.

Wasting taxpayer money in photo storage is a laugh. That isn’t the same category of argument as the idea that is is “overreach.”

It would be entirely possible to have a benevolent dictator, he might think he is doing everything for the benefit of the people - and he might even be right. This situation is fine, the issue is what happens when that dictator dies.

Similarly with mass surveillance, if used with restraint and for the right reasons it could be completely fine. The problem is what happens if the situation changes, there is now a massively powerful tool available with little recourse for change.

I think the issue is not the situation as it is _now_, it's the risk potential it inherently has that is terrifying.

You lost me at this straw man. You are tossing around nebulous and vague concerns. Would it be fair to say your concern is potential abuse of your photos by a government entity?

It's fair to say my concern is potential abuse of any system in a fluctuating context.

It's not just the picture, it's the databases and the veracity of mass data base mining that can come from it.

To better explain:

Right now powerful entities have files on me. My actives. And yours. The collection, use and sharing of these files between these powerful entities violate our rights, even if only in intent (though arguably more)

Right now these files are mostly loosely created, probabilistic based associations.

If you've ever used any ID verification systems, you'd understand this (think lexisnexis)

So, they sort of know, but don't fully. Good. Even if these entities have shown the desire to violate my rights, they can't do it well because of issues related to data collection. I like that.

So the way I see these advancements is... great, now these entities are getting mass fed pictures that are 99.999% a correct association. This could be used for facial recognition software tie ins to say, CCTV systems. As stated, you need more than one picture to increase accuracy.

I don't want them to have it.

Right now, their interest (in violating my rights for profit and power) and my interest (in staking claim to the rights my forebearers fought for) are oposite.

However your concern about building a face database is valid. Note that China somehow can do it with only your Wechat profile. Maybe they are better at ML than the US. They are already automatically fining jaywalkers by face ID. And I assume worse.

Easy to say. How about evidence. I offer all the evidence from Snowden and other whistle blowers to beg the contrary.

To me, it's very obvious unless you are intentionally not wanting to see it.

Notice I said if only in intent, I'm not here to split hairs on legalese. Intent in things like the Fourth Amendment to me is very clear.

I live in an area where when I go for weekend drives, I have to stop at border patrol check points where I am forced to stop and answer officer's questions. I'm not even traveling between states and I'm over 50 miles from the boarder in those points.

Trust me, I understand the legalese they use to justify it. They define a border zone that I think goes a hundred or two miles in land, which means it covers something like 70% of major American metro areas and allows the gov to basically conduct illegal searches by creating a loop hole.

But that is the point. My rights are routinely violated with impunity. People who have stood up to this get literally crushed. Clear whistle blowers are declared spies. It's them working to undermine my rights. Rights that people literally died so I could have. I think it's wrong to let those rights go. It's why I support things like the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

This is nothing new, only new for people that don’t live near a physical border in the US.

The government clearly has missed a few people coming in and out on Visas. What is a way better than the current border protection method that also protects everyone’s privacy?

Would your argument against street corner recognition systems have been different before and after facial recognition was required at the border?

You mention that having your photo taken at passport control is “pretty normal”. Do you remember when it was not? Would you be more concerned if we had gone straight from a situation where no pictures were taken, to rolling out a facial recognition system at the border?

Government does not already have photos of all individuals who cross street corners (there is no legal requirement to have ID) and government does not record a list of names of each person who crosses the street. So, cameras at street corners have a much larger delta - between no photos and photos and between no internal location records and having internal location records.

This reeks to me of another situation where we're trying to put the cat back in the bag, and that has basically never worked (except maybe nuclear disarmament, and even then... barely, and largely because the capital costs are so extreme).

Surveillance tech is cheap and widely available and will only continue to move in that direction. Attempting to make sure no one has a photo of you without your consent seems hilariously impossible to me. Focus on the outcomes instead.

For example road side license plate readers sound cheap, but unless a cop is next to it it’s really hard to catch the car that tripped one.

But the London cops have been caught falsely accusing, arresting and holding people for weeks based on facial recognition (based on both wrongly made identifications, and wrong input pictures).

People have had their own medical files used against them in court by youth services and mental health services departments of their own governments.

People have been convicted based on factually incorrect information entered into police databases, then corrected in one place, but not the other.

The government keeps getting caught using privacy laws in ways not intended: for instance, to hide the identity of cops that beat up someone for racist reasons, preventing them from getting sued.

IRS has access to almost all databases. From medical files to bank statements. What they use it for ...

We all know WHO needs to be prevented from merging databases to increase people's safety. And it's not Facebook, it's the police, health and government departments. We need a right to delete any information about yourself AND ALL LINKED AND COPIED VERSIONS in all government database, and all information sharing needs to be "default deny". No government department has any business whatsoever in your medical files. All information provided by the government in court needs to be subject to invalidation by counter-experts. And it should be default practice to have all government information and copies of it that involves any person directly or indirectly "time-out". And to prevent government abuse of privacy laws, anyone working for government needs to be identified on request in any record that involves that person acting in any official capacity.

Some people don't mind these kinds of surveillance. You might staunchly disagree but you have to accept that it's a valid position.

What if I don't accept it?

Is it valid?

At some point we have to determine what is a minimum acceptable level of cohesiveness in though to take someone seriously.

I'm not saying anti-privacy people are in such extreme, but I don't like the 'everything a valid position in the post-modern relativist world'. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and some people might draw it further in or further out. But we all do it.

I don't know of anyone who likes sticking needles in themselves (aside from addicts, but that's another story), only those who understand the value of what's in them (I suppose that addicts would fall into that category, too.)

I distinctly remember my mom explaining why I was about to get stabbed with needles when I was four. I didn't mind.

Well, now they can check your identity anywhere with a camera removing all agency. Yay!

So only non-citizens would be able to "use" the face-as-boarding-pass "feature"?