It isn’t US Boarder Control running the facial control system, its Delta, Southwest, or anyone else, which has implications about the privacy of the biometric data, that up until this point hasn’t been collected by Airlines, only Boarder entities.
That said, in order to boot strap this system, Delta et., al. would have had to either; 1. Build their own database of biometric and facial data that they believe was reliable (unlikely) 2. Get a full and continually updated copy from CBP (Probably noisy) 3. Use an API made available by CBP that acts as a Biometric/Facial oracle.
I’ve heard rumblings that it’s 3, but I can’t cite anything to back that claim up, so grains of salt.
Here they are using this information to automatically check that it is in fact you instead of having a staff member look at you and check against your passport's photo.
This is especially true for domestic travel as well.
As a US citizen, this is mostly just to validate any visa requirements for the country you're traveling to.
However, for non citizens, this data gets sent to CBP to create an exit record. I believe the concern is that between the check-in counter and the flight, you could trade places with someone to effectively overstay a visa without CBP's computer systems noticing (since you'd have a valid exit record)... hence the push for facial recognition at the gate.
At TSA, They scan the first page of passport (or local ID) and usually Full body scan. So in the strict sense of facially scanned no.
At the gate (until now), neither. They would scan the boarding pass and eyeball the passport if international.
Again the point here is that in the first two instances these are Government agencies doing the scanning. At the third, the Government no longer has anything to do with it.
The question with this stuff is how and where are Airlines (private companies) getting a database of biometric data and what are they doing with it?
Neither of which are good.
Internal flight could be anonymous, but when is the last time anyone paid for flights by cash?
Let me tell you about flying before 1996, kid. It was great. No ID presented, you just needed a paper ticket. You could actually buy and sell paper tickets on usenet (and people did), and you could wave to your family when you get on the airplane as you didn't need a ticket to be in the boarding area. I thought it was a disaster when they started implementing the dystopia we have today, and remember premonitions of disaster listening to some douchbag I brought to the airport babbling about the government "keeping us safe."
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Oh yeah: no body cavity searches getting past the gate, we had legroom, free food on the plane, free baggage, and they didn't blare CNN in the airports like some Orwell dystopia, or ads for the airline on the airplane telescreen. The planes were better too; 747 was super common and comfy (now you need to fly the Luftwaffe or British Airways, and the seats aint what they used to be), and if you were loaded, you could take the Concorde across the pond for a price which seems comically cheap these days.
Because while air travel has undoubtedly gotten less comfortable, in most (if not all?) cases it's also gotten cheaper. With every passing decade air travel because accessible to broader and broader swaths of the economic pyramid. Now it's at the point where the cost of the taxi to a London airport can cost more than the airfare of whatever budget airline flight I'd be on.
I am [not really] too young to have flown on the Concorde, but a Googling of "Concorde flight cost" suggested between $6000 and $12000 round trip for NYC-LON flights. That doesn't strike me as cheap.
What are you talking about with the concorde flights!? They were a lot more expensive than they are today let alone the prices of a normal carrier flight at the time. When was the last time you flew?
How does the facial recognition system work? I'm thinking that biometric passports contain the necessary data and that the airline has already got then by scanning the passport at some point so that it quick and easy to use facial recognition at boarding time.
If so, it's pointless to request to opt out while boarding, really.
In any case, there is no anonymity in air travel (this is really more about anonymity than privacy). You are identified and tracked from the moment you buy your ticket until you leave the airport.
Facial recognition is a new technology that people need to adapt and be confident with. It will take some time then no-one will pay attention anymore.