Whatever Happened to Those Self-Service Passport Kiosks at Airports? | Hacker News Reader

Whatever Happened to Those Self-Service Passport Kiosks at Airports?

nytimes.com

38 pointslxm60 comments

> “We don’t want another 9/11 in this country,” said Mr. Russo, who noted that the system frees up officers to focus on asking the “important questions that help us keep terrorists and drug smugglers out of the country.”

Fuck anyone who uses 9/11 as an excuse to reduce anyone's civil liberties. On the one hand, they are almost always defending some ass-backwards initiative that doesn't actually keep us secure. And on the other, we freaked out way too much over 9/11. 3,000 people died in 9/11, and we started two wars that lasted 20 years and killed 375,000 civilians. Yet the same number of people (~2500) die every month in traffic collisions - 600,000 dead over 20 years - and we have not yet implemented any draconian safety measures after decades of uninterrupted vehicular deaths.

There were days in prior peaks where we had 2-3k dead from covid.

Heck we had days in IL where we had 200+ dead in a day. (How much does a 737 hold and how much did those people's medical bills cost?)

As of today there are 391 deaths per day, 2,737 per week according to the official stats in the New York Times. It's not a thing of the past.

A death from an epidemic and a death from a terror attack are not equivalent in the threat they pose to a country. Terror attacks can destabilize political systems and damage economies to a far greater extent than the number of dead might suggest.

The US gov't clearly doesn't care about terrorist attacks any more. They happen all the time, and hardly even make the news:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

(3500 injured, 703 dead last year alone...)

For context, the CDC reports 24576 homicides in 2021, 19384 of which are firearm related. Don't know if redefining terrorism to include non-politically-motivated homicide is useful.

Those don’t fit the definition of terrorism.

I guess someone redefined terrorism then.

Right, and we didn't go bomb China when that happened.

Well your media definitely did.

The shock factor wasn't the death count, it was that the American homeland came under direct attack from overseas.

For those unaware, the US has historically had very few attacks on the homeland from enemies who are not immediate neighbours. Off the top of my head, the second-most recent example before 9/11 was Japan attacking Pearl Harbor and the Aleutian Islands, and dropping some balloon bombs(?) on the West Coast during WW2. Before that we would go all the way back to the War of 1812 with Britain sacking Washington and all that.

When the country historically is not used to having the homeland threatened, that shock and revelation leads to kneejerk reactions of the "how fucking /dare/ you" sort.

> *Japan...dropping some balloon bombs(?) on the West Coast during WW2

In fact six people were killed by one of those balloon bombs, five children and their Sunday school teacher on an outing in southern Oregon.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1945-japanese-balloon...

The Japanese also attempted a naval bombardment of Santa Barbara, California. All they ended up hitting was an aviation fuel storage tank, but it did apparently influence the US's decision imprison people of Japanese ancestry without cause.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Ellwood#Bombard...

Anybody who cites 9/11 or terrorism as a reason to reduce civil liberties is a direct threat to American values. If you destroy what it means to be American in the face of terrorism, you are letting terrorists win. People need to understand that but sadly fascists increasingly availed of the cloak of national security to enact their schemes to destroy all of the hard won victories for progress.

And so one might argue that to a substantial degree, OBL won.

> Fuck anyone who uses 9/11 as an excuse to reduce anyone's civil liberties

Whilst I agree that the reference to 9/11 was a cheap excuse - I think all of the terrorists had entered the US legally, and these changes would stop nothing. But what civil liberties are being taken away by these kiosks or lack of the kiosks?

They're being removed because they don't verify the person with them is the passport holder - apart from that they capture/process/store the same information as a 'manual' passport inspection. The passport holders photo, passport details and entry/exit details are all held on database - or am I missing something?

What would have been the correct 9/11 response?

I recently flew from Greece to London on an Australian passport and was able to utilize the same automated passport lanes as everyone else. It's amazing what a difference they make, I was off the plane and through customs in less than 30 minutes. The same system is used in Australia, NZ and I'm sure other countries too. It's a shame the same system can't (or won't) be adopted by the US.

IIRC some airports have them in the US - legacy of a trial run maybe? Oh, I see they're removing them because they don't do facial recognition.

That's weird though, our ones in NZ use facial recognition, have to scan your passport, and then step into the booth, and look at the camera.

They don't fingerprint us though, that's some specialness I've only encountered in the US.

> They don't fingerprint us though, that's some specialness I've only encountered in the US

Off the top of my head, Singapore and Japan do fingerprints for visitors at entry as well.

Fingerprints are one of the biometrics[1] that can be stored on the chip in an e-passport, but most countries that are adding automated border control today use facial recognition since photos are universal.

1. Photo, fingerprints, and iris scan. Relatively few countries add fingerprints and I don’t think any country adds iris scans.

I've been photographed and fingerprinted in both Bulgaria and France when getting an ID card and passport (i don't know which one has which biometric, probably both have the same information).

Yeah, I’m fairly sure all of the EEA adds fingerprints, and that this is the original reason that automated Schengen gates only accept EEA passports. When I say “relatively few” I mean on a global basis.

ID cards are another matter, but I didn’t include them because most national ID cards can’t be used as international travel documents.

I didn't get fingerprinted in Singapore, but haven't been through Changi in six years, so could well be a new thing, or they just think Kiwis are harmless.

Fingerprinting has been around for as long as Singapore has been using automated exit gates - you enroll your bios at a staffed lane on the way in and then use the auto gates on the way out - which I want to say is at least 10ish years. They’re moving everything to facial recognition and iris scan now.

This is tangential to the topic of immigration clearance but my Singapore ID literally has my thumbprint printed on it, which I’ve always found hilarious.

Huh, that would've the time I was transiting through there, and left the airport a couple of times to explore the city, but never fingerprint scanned.

Maybe the biometrics on my passport were sufficient already? NZ tends to be an early adopter of such things, as we make a great place to trial new tech, small market unafraid of new shiny.

Fingerprinting is also done in China and in EU we have a biometric passports, containing fingerprints (also residence permits and identity cards contain these).

The problem with automated systems is the collection of biometric data. It’s far too invasive and is a perverse incentive to grow identification databases.

The automated system collects the exact same data as the non-automated one.

At a much lower cost to the state...

Negative, to enroll in Clear you must provide fingerprints. I’ve never been fingerprinted and travel regularly.

I have no interest in using these gates and being forced into a face recognition data collection is pretty crappy.

You're going through facial recognition whether you like it or not. The agent behind the counter has cameras, too.

You have the right to queue for several hours and present your biometric passport to a human who will take your picture, save it to another database, and then visually compare that to your face.

In the US, returning US citizens have the right to re-enter without a photo or a fingerprint. It's a right I'd like to preserve, and that's getting increasingly harder to exercise as everything in the airport nudges passengers to automated systems with no obvious way to opt out.

Obviously other countries have their own rules.

Have you ever tried refusing to show a passport? As far as I know, US citizens have the absolute right to enter its borders (https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/home.pdf), but whenever I read about that, I wonder how they go about that when a random stranger arrives at a border and claims to be a citizen.

The best example I can find is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Worthy#Right_to_travel...:

“He was able to return to the U.S. in October 1961, showing his birth certificate and vaccination record at Miami Airport”

That’s decades ago, though, and he still showed something (but not something that realistically identified him) to get in.

All you need to do is convince the agent that you are an American Citizen.

You can show them any identification documents you do have, like drivers license, to establish your identity. For establishing citizenship, one option is if you previously has a passport (expired, or just not with you) then can look up that record, and if it is recent enough to pull up a photo they can compare to you that can also help.

Other ways of verifying citizenship depends on what databases they have access to. For example if they have access to the Social security numident database, they could look up a number to see the associated name citizenship flags. I'm not sure if they do though.

From what I have heard anecdotally is that it is usually not too hard to convince them if you really are a citizen (except in edge cases like being born abroad to Americans without parents registering your birth with the US.)

In any case they will formally warn you about it being illegal for Americans to enter without a passport (it is, but there is no punishment for the crime anymore). This is to deter you from doing this again in the future, as having a passport makes things much faster and easier for everyone.

Yeah, they're very convenient. Annoyingly though the automated gates in the Schengen area (much of continental Europe) only allow EU/EEA passports though.

I got to queue behind some _very_ pissed off Brits in the non-EU queue post Brexit.

It was rather amusing, in a shameful way.

Yes automated passport machines are very much still in use here in the UK.

Personally I use them 2, maybe, 3 times every trip before queuing up again to have my passport checked manually. :P

Still worth it to jump to the front of the queue...

Surprising thing is that there were 4 such lanes at Schipol, Amsterdam but I din't see a lot of people using it. 99% of people were standing in that long line with me. Even those who had those red passports. I wonder why not?

I find it shocking that the previous kiosks were allowed to be used when they didn't even compare the person using a passport with the picture on that passport. Does that mean anyone could use anyone else's passport?

In some places around the EU (and UK) there are automatic kiosk that use the NFC chip in your passport to read the picture, and compare that to a live photo they're taking, while also checking for you in various databases. It's secure and fast, and saves on useless manpower.

Yeah EU passports are so smart you can scan them with a barcode scanner. But you can't board without a human person verifying your passport and boarding pass. So it's not that easy to fly with someone elses passport, and also I would assume highly illegal.

I suspect they get your picture on their screen through your census info, so they don't really need to handle your passport. It's a technical convenience.

They don’t read a barcode, they use NFC. A chip in the passport stores your picture and fingerprint (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_passport#European_Un...)

Ok that sounds plausible but there is something being scanned from my Swedish passport that is not NFC. Every time I use my passport to identify myself they scan it with a red light scanner, like a barcode scanner, and they can hold it like 30 cm away so I don't think it's NFC.

That same light is in the little ticket terminals at the Copenhagen airport when you scan your passport there.

Possibly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine-readable_passport ?

These are the two lines you find on the page with your photo, at the bottom. They are standardized.

You will find something similar on your ID card if it is a modern one.

The scanned information is used as a key to access the information on the NFC chip. This is intended as a security step to prevent malicious reading of the chip.

I’ve had good experiences with the trusted traveler program in the US - you bypass the lines when boarding and when returning from international travel you can take the diplomatic lane and bypass most of customs. The problem is that my pass expired almost two years ago and my application for renewal has been processing for even longer. Two years (and counting) just to get to the point where you can get on the waiting list for the in-person interview which I believe has another two year wait. Calling or writing does not help, they just tell you there is a backlog and that’s all they know.

"building a related tool intended to spot foreign nationals lacking proper visas when they depart the country."

Why would you be worried when they're leaving anyway?

Because it's cheaper to enforce on people leaving instead of monitoring where every foreigner is in the land.

To deny entry next time.

If you fly private apparently customs will come to you on your plane. Is this true, and does this apply to them as well?

not paywalled version https://web.archive.org/web/20221006012514/https://www.nytim...

your welcome

Paywalled, so ?

But I just used a passport (border entry) kiosk at DFW airport two weeks ago. Same machines I have used for 10 years of frequent entries at that airport.

NYT articles usually work when opened in a new incognito session. That said:

https://archive.ph/2022.10.05-171902/https://www.nytimes.com...

For me, Incognito hasn't worked for NYT or any other major news site for a very long time

NYT also works when disabling JavaScript from nytimes.com

How does it make sense to have two totally different standards for verifying the identities of arriving visitors? Airports are super strict, but at the southern borders anyone can come in?

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