19-05-2025
Experts Issue Warning on New TSA Technology
In recent years, the TSA has rolled out some new technology at its airport security checkpoints that uses a real-time photo of your face to confirm passenger identity. However, some experts have issued a warning about the new technology.
In an article published last month, Monica Torres of HuffPost quoted a few security experts as she warned travelers to opt out of the facial scan whenever they get to the security checkpoint at the airport.
Travis LeBlanc, a lawyer and a former member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, told Torres that the benefit of declining the facial recognition technology 'is you don't have to submit your picture to the government, for the government to scan it and store it under their rules.'
Those concerns were echoed by Jennifer King, a privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. King said that the TSA's public communications are 'a little vague about what they were doing with the data.'
That, coupled with some past privacy issues regarding the Department of Homeland Security, leads her to decline the face scan every time.
'I'm sure that the dream of enforcement agencies would be to be able to track people in real time based on something like facial recognition,' King said.
It's worth noting that the TSA explicitly states that this technology is not used for surveillance and that it does not store data for any travelers.
'Photos are not stored or saved after a positive ID match has been made, except in a limited testing environment for evaluation of the effectiveness of the technology,' TSA states.
However, LeBlanc warns that there are other potential uses for the technology.
"TSA is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which is also responsible for immigration enforcement," he said. "There's lots of different uses that you could see for these images."
He also warned that the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which serves as a watchdog for travelers' civil liberties, recently had key members fired, including himself. He said that the board was actually preparing a report on the TSA's new technology before the firings.
As a result of the firings, LeBlanc warns that the board has 'lost the watchdog that would be there to promote transparency as well as make recommendations on changes to the system that would better balance privacy and civil liberties.'
A TSA spokesperson has addressed these concerns, telling Huffpost in a statement that 'a real-time picture simply means that an image is taken at the kiosk and that 'live' photograph is matched against the image on the identification credential.'
If a traveler does have reservations with the new technology, they will be permitted to opt out of the facial recognition screening.
'There is no issue and no delay with a traveler exercising their rights to not participate in the automated biometrics matching technology,' the TSA says on its website.
