The TSA will use facial recognition in over 400 airports

cyu@sh.itjust.worksbanned from community to Technology@lemmy.world – 209 points –
The TSA will use facial recognition in over 400 airports
theverge.com
37

I just rewatched Minority Report a couple weeks ago for some reason. There was this scene where Tom Cruise had to get a new set of eyes because he got automatically identified everywhere. Everyone in the movie was constantly bombarded with personalized ads everywhere they went.. That movie is over 20 years old and they knew exactly what was coming. Fucking scary shit...

Hello Mr. Yakamoto and welcome back to the GAP!

This already happens with bluetooth signatures to a degree, minus the personalized in your face ad

Dick was a terrible writer but a prophetic visionary with his ideas.

They already have certain things in some airports that scan you and tell you your boarding info on screens. These screens are designed to only be seen from the angle you’re at so it’s not too far a leap to imagine ads of the future using facial recognition with this technology

I was just at an airport that was doing this. I entered my ID into a slot and they scanned my face. There was a sign that said that the face scan would be immediately deleted, but I don't believe it. I didn't really want to be face scanned but I also didn't want to make a scene.

You have the right to decline.

Edit: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/11/tsa-airport-security-facial-recognition/

A TSA spokesman told me that if you say no, it won’t take you longer to clear airport security, and you won’t be subject to extra screening.

Yeah, but I was very caught off guard and they didn't advertise that as an option.

When I flew out of DSM they had a sign right before the agent informing us of the facial recognition and it was fairly small where it said you could decline. I actually did decline, but I think the majority of people did it just because that's what the agent told them to do. They didn't question it at all.

do you? I was coming back to the states from another country, and I walked up to the booth and the border agent said "Hi, name" (using my first name) before I handed them my passport. There was no opting out of that one.

1 more...
1 more...

I won’t comment on the ethical pros and cons of this being deployed in airports but from a system perspective it needs to be much higher than 97%. LAX processes about 240,000 travellers a day. 3% error translates to over 7000 travellers a day being incorrectly processed. What you want is closer to 99.9 so the error is in the hundreds and can reasonably be corrected with human intervention. This may sound like an easy push but anyone experienced in training AI/ML systems knows this is still a fair bit of work and every single percent increase in accuracy is significant.

I imagine the vast majority of those 3% error cases get rerouted to a human border official for handling. This is basically a sanity check, and sounds reasonable. The use of AI in the first instance shouldn't be making things worse, since AI is already superior than humans at facial recognitiob. I wouldn't be surprised if normal border officials have a significantly higher than 3% error rate in face matching.

rerouted to a human border official for handling.

No, the person who was misidentified will be routed to a human TSA agent for harassment. Every single time they fly.

Will this be like the "random" checks if your complexion is olive or darker or if your name seems kind of funny?

100% this will already be better than humans, but similar to say autonomous driving, the goals should be better than human otherwise we see vendors doing just enough to achieve the simple goal of saving costs or making sales. I would hope they run this in parallel and the system flags anything with confidence less than a threshold for human scrutiny and comparison. Analysing the human decisions in parallel to the AI decisions will help to refine the models and also give some visibility to current accuracy with just human checks. This training and review aspect is a lot of work.

I also want to know the statistics in regards to people in makeup. With a bit of makeup I bet you could get this system to think you're whoever's photo is on your ID.

Camera-based systems are usually quite easy to fool so it could result in a seriously false sense of security.

A "false sense of security" has always been TSA's mission statement, so that's on-brand AF.

Why does the TSA even get funding for stuff like this? They're the tiger-repellant rock of government agencies. Every TSA employee's shift should begin with a self-report phone call to the Fraud, Waste & Abuse hotline.

Came in on an international flight from the UK to US recently and at US CBP they barely said "hello," didn't even ask for passports, declaration form or anything. Had all four of us in my family get a quick pic on the webcam and pushed us through within about 30 seconds. It was nice to keep the line moving but a little freaky that he didn't even ask to see our actual passports.

I dont know why, but a lot of these folks have a stick up their ass. Maybe they need therapy.

The more I read about the states and the more time goes on, I just have less and less desire to ever visit.

As someone who lives here, I have more and more desire to leave.

2 more...

I'm not really thrilled about this. I don't like bio-metrics really. Plus masks. Also, I think a lot of these aren't actually 97% accurate. Marketing.