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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the problem here.

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.

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The point this article misses entirely is that the Facial recognition system is now at the gate which is ostensibly Delta’s territory.

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.

My understanding is that biometric data are contained in your passport, which is already scanned by airlines when you check in and/or board planes.

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.

I’m not certain of the particular setup here (per airport thing) but I’ve never had them scan my passport at the gate in a US Airport, only at Immigration checkpoints for international travel and TSA.

This is especially true for domestic travel as well.

But were you facially scanned?

At Immigration: Scanned, no, Photographed, yes. (So depending on your definition)

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?

They submit the data to the CBP database and get a result back. It will help to validate exit reporting and ensure that the right people are being reported as leaving the country on their I-94s

Yes I suspect this, but the consumer has no way of verifying this. Similarly it also means that the airlines have access to a Face Oracle and can build their own database with confidence based on that result.

Neither of which are good.

For international flights, they traditionally scan your passport at the check-in counter.

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.

Yeah, the chip includes a 12-30kB JPEG with the person's photo: https://readid.com/blog/face-images-in-ePassports

> Delta’s territory This feels like the opposite of the GDPR stories from a few months ago. Instead of all the "It's coming" hype and opt in agreements, the company just gets the info without a fuss...

I think most are looking at this backwards. This system is most likely the reCaptcha of facial recognition. The same way Google already knows you're not a robot, and they just use you to improve their image recognition algos. The facial recognition at the airport is one of the few ways to get multiple pictures of people while knowing with near 100% certainty the face matches the name. The system is building out their data set. Running facial recognition in other scenarios (e.g. security footage after a crime) off a single passport photo is hard. Running facial recognition off of a data set with many different photos is much better.

So, what you're saying is... there's no problem because people have already given up anyway? At the very least opting out gives them a data point that their theatric procedures aren't readily accepted by everybody.

There's no 'given up'. There was no privacy to begin with. I don't see why crossing borders should be anonymous, as long as borders exist.

Internal flight could be anonymous, but when is the last time anyone paid for flights by cash?

>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."

Nothing you've said here would make me want to go back to 1996 and take a flight, granddad.

I guess animals often grow to enjoy their cages; had a pal who kinda freaked out when he got out of the pokey too.

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.

Is it comically cheap if you don't consider inflation?

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.

Air travel definetely got cheaper. As as a software engineer (with a bit for search hacking) I can now afford flying across globe (26 hrs) in business (which used to be first) twice a year.

Sounds like your issues are related to flying in the states? If you're problem with flying today includes cavity searches and being able to hike up prices by trading tickets then you're probably right, best if you don't fly and we'll all be the better off for it.

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?

Everything he said would make me want to take more flights, you child.

Really? Because many more people fly now than they did in the 90s, must be so horrible for you in this dystopian future we're living in.

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself.

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

Every one of your posts to HN has included a personal attack. That's not allowed here, so we've banned the account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

You mean the whole 1 comment I ever made before? It's these condescending idiots that bring it out in me.

I meant these:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20348725

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20348536

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20343367

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19787124

A classic passport photo is considerably different than a 3d/hd scan of your face with facial recognition algorithms copied everywhere.

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