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A comment on U.S. TSA expands controversial facial recognition program. Parent comment

Re:U.S. TSA expands controversial facial recognition program by toomuchtodo on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @10:39AM (#36310878)
The TSA already has your travel data from the airline PNR database [1], which stores your travel data for five years, after which it is moved to cold storage for another ten years. PNR is a contributing system as to how the TSA can provide identity proofing at the checkpoint with only an ID now, versus previously needing your boarding pass [2].

These are governance issues, not technology issues. TSA using facial recognition is no different than an agent comparing you to your ID (except that the automated system increases throughput), depending on what the exception process looks like.

[1] https://www.cbp.gov/travel/clearing-cbp/passenger-name-recor...

[2] https://www.dhs.gov/publication/dhstsapia-018-tsa-secure-fli...

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Re:U.S. TSA expands controversial facial recognition program by StockHuman on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @02:50PM (#36314992)
No, a human being comparing your face to a picture is entirely unlike facial recognition. The cop matching your face will not remember you for an arbitrarily long time (or indefinitely), cannot transmit the memory of your face to other cops across space and time, does not catalogue what you are wearing, the delta between your actual face and the image, and all other manner of minutiae.

Cameras and automated systems are likewise fallible in entirely separate dimensions (personal bias, circumstantial factors): the camera does not get tired, but we place a certain unwarranted trust in black-box systems that fail in unexpected ways.

They are absolutely governance issues, but _augmented_ in scale by technological reach.

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