You can opt out of airport face scans
vox.com
vox.com
The whole idea of opting out is a scam. They are 100% planning to force mandatory facial recognition on the general public.
One reason to opt out even though everyone says “they already have your picture 1000 different ways” is that these cameras are not normal cameras, they are stereoscopic close-range cameras that take a 3D image of your face. That takes facial recognition accuracy up to 95%+, from 70% or less on a normal photo.
Furthermore, they say they do not retain the image. That may or may not be strictly true. But they do not say they are deleting the eigenvector, facial measurements, a hash of the image, or any other useful derivatives of the image
Interesting, I'm fairly sure the cameras at one US airport I was (maybe Salt Lake City?) were just bog standard Logitech C920 like my previous webcam. Do you have more information on the cameras?
Worse, unlike false positive with fingerprints the suspects will likely look similar to the cops not just the algorithm. There’s a major incentive to opt out simply as a result of false positives.
So what? Do you think that the thousands of cameras you encounter every day aren’t doing this already?
I think the aim for culture is to limit what we can do with these data, rather than to try to prevent collection of these data. Cameras are too plentiful and powerful to not expect your image linked to your identity. Especially for governmental, lawful uses like immigration screening.
It’s not that I like facial scanning. It’s that it is pervasive and can do nothing about it.
That’s circular reasoning. It is all the more reason to oppose this crap today so it does not become pervasive. Think of anything that you don’t like but is pervasive. Don’t you wish the people that came before you would have opposed that a bit harder so you don’t have to deal with it now?
The noninvasive part of your argument does matter, but I feel that’s much harder to define as everyone will draw the line somewhere different.
In that cameras aren’t cheap inherently, but because chips and storage and power are so cheap it leads to cheap cameras. So people chose all of the other non-camera functions that also led to cheap camera.
For dna, I wouldn’t be a fan of just gradually adding dna identifying machines until it’s pervasive. I’d like to not do that. But what I mean is that dna sequencing will become so cheap due to other factors that it will be pervasive to just add id machines to air conditioners or whatever.
Just like dna sampling will one day be so cheap that air conditioners test for every person and every germ they see. It will be so cheap as hard to stop. I guess we can resist digital stuff making dna cheaper. But we’ll have to stop all the other benefits (real time, targeted anti-virals, etc).
What? No. The problem with this stuff is the privacy-invasion aspect.
For example, ubiquitous camera installations in public spaces and businesses are 100% fine if they're truly closed-circuit systems that have no storage capability. If all these cameras offer is tele-vision, then there's no privacy problem.
So, if this sort of stuff was guaranteed to be used for a purpose that's beneficial to individual clients and the public at large (rather than scraping up pennies by selling the recordings to data brokers and data analysis firms), there'd be no problem at all.
The solution becomes clear: make video, audio, still image, biometric, and behavioral data toxic waste.
* If a company ever uses such data in any way that's not clearly and conspicuously disclosed in plain English to their clients, fire every executive member of that company and permanently bar each of them from holding any executive or management position ever again.
* If a company ever sends any payment (whether monetary, or in goods and/or services rendered) to a company that is (or owns) a data broker, customer/consumer data analysis firm, or similar, then that company is considered to have engaged the services of said company and presumed to be sending the data of their clients to said company. Fire every executive member of that company and permanently bar each of them from holding any executive or management position ever again.
This doesn’t seem realistic to me because those data are useful for so many valid purposes and the tech is ubiquitous. So we’d have to regulate and it would be expensive and futile.
Your solutions are difficult to enforce (eg, “fire every executive” doesn’t work even in things like Enron or mine disasters).
No shit? You don't say.
Seriously, regulations and laws are how you get companies to act against their own best interests.
> (eg, “fire every executive” doesn’t work even in things like Enron or mine disasters).
You seem to have forgotten the second part of the punishment. I'll quote the punishment again:
> [F]ire every executive member of that company and permanently bar each of them from holding any executive or management position ever again.
I don't remember any Enron executive being barred from holding any executive or management position ever again. Do you?
> Your solutions are difficult to enforce...
Oh? Someone comes to the relevant regulator, or Federal law enforcement with evidence of this crime happening. By law, FedGov will be obligated to investigate. Either they corroborate the evidence and deliver the punishment, or they do not and they do nothing.
This punishment is so extreme that you will only have to catch a few companies to prevent nearly everyone else from breaking this law. (After all, what executive team would risk decades of each of them getting a seven-to-eight-figure salary just so that a couple of them can get a one-off bonus one or two orders of magnitude smaller?)
Of course that's happening. It's still worthwhile to reduce the amount of this sort of thing where possible, though.
> I think the aim for culture is to limit what we can do with these data, rather than to try to prevent collection of these data.
I agree that the real, serious issue isn't the photos themselves as much as the databases that hold them.
That said, why not address both problems? Particularly since we can't ever actually know if photos are being stored or not, but we (usually) can see the camera. In terms of verifiability, restricting the use of cameras is better than restricting the use of the data.
My car has 2 cameras, my house has 4, my neighbors on either side have a bunch. Most folks around here also have dash cam in their car. All the businesses (pizza places, auto parts shops, small engine etc) have cameras everywhere. Local PD has new axon body cams. We for some reason have red light/traffic cams. State Routes, Interstates have cameras roughly every half mile.
If you are even remotely analagous to most people on HN, you are recorded at least once a day 1. without your knowledge 2.without consent.
my neighbors all have door cams but the liklihood of them seeing me as I drive by is low. even if I get tagged by literally 20 cams on the way to work and on the way back, plus another 20 getting lunch, I'm still nowhere near "thousands"
I don’t live in the US. Maybe that’s the difference?
They already have your photo if you have a driver's license or US passport or basically any form of government ID. The whole point is to compare it to what they already have.
So I don't really understand the privacy concerns here, but maybe I'm missing something. Is there something that these cameras record that is different from the biometrics they already have from your ID photos?
(You're also obviously already being constantly recorded by surveillance cameras in the airport, of course.)
The super duper classified high security no-flight list was shared internationally via a public ftp server with the username and password anonymous:anonymous.
A hacker that disclosed that responsibly got into lots of troubles for exposing that. [1]
So I'd argue indeed I assume that TSA and border control use the most incompetent and most lying way to solve anything when the control mechanism are privacy laws. They literally care 0% about that. If they say they delete something, I assume they keep a physical copy.
And I totally understand people worrying a lot about that, given the golden age of deep fakes we live in. Imagine what's possible 10 years ahead when that biometric data can be used to imitate and authenticate you.
> biometrics they already have
> obviously already being constantly recorded by surveillance cameras
The whole “boiling the frog” meme is that nobody notices the rights being curtailed over time. I understand the whole “not in public” thing but there’s still got to be a point where the depth and/or breadth of information gathered is too much.
It should be noted the frogs regulate their body temperature by jumping in and out of water and thus do react to even slow increases of temperature.
so what is the whole salami?
It's not unreasonable to know exactly who is on which flight imho.
It is slightly worse to have face recognition in public spaces, but your identity is not a secret. As long as this information is not available for private uses (aka, it is only used by law enforcement), i don't see the privacy implications of public facial recognition.
Governments, like many other institutions, tend to find ways to generate demand for their services. By the time it happens the response is; ‘of course we need these things’, and in time that will be replaced by ‘that’s the way it has always been’ by people who don’t know any better. Just because it’s normal now doesn’t mean it always had to be this way.
I’m not going to summarize everything the whole salami encompasses - that’s a rather big topic that’s probably best left as an exercise for the reader.
I remember, it must have been in the late '90s, when Windows added the ability to get "important security updates" via the internet and a lot of people were turning it off. I remember a comment on slashdot about how we would all become conditioned to accept it.
...and the thing that I said: "here's a thing that you don't want to do, and don't see the need for, but don't worry because it wont happen often" (then over time it starts happening often.
The former is not conditioning. The latter is.
So long as I can assume an anonymous role on occasion, and other people can too, I must think twice before doing anything destructively rash. Nobody else has bombed this thing yet, and they surely could, so perhaps it exists with the consent of the people around it.
But if surveillance and control exceeds some ill defined threshold such that its not clear that so many of us actually could get away with fighting back against the machinery of control that surrounds us. Well then one must question whether it actually exists with our consent. And in that case, if we're lucky enough to be able to get away with dismantling it, it very well may be our responsibility to do so.
That's the principle. There must still be some line not yet crossed. Because otherwise there's nothing to do besides fight. So we don't let them cross whatever the arbitrary line is because most of us are not prepared for the fight.
if you can't afford your rights, that's a you problem, in America
But I think society has decided people who want to engage in acts of resistance and sabotage shouldn't be allowed in airports.
As you might be aware there's quite a history of people using the aviation system to make a political point via sabotage.
-- Patrick McGoohan, The Prisoner
If you didn't vote for them, these laws still represent the choice of the majority (or at least of their representatives).
Either way, surveillance laws are a direct consequence of our democratic process and must be acknowledged as such.
You say "it's your responsibility to hold them accountable for their actions and to check at that level"- but all I see in the parent comments is people discussing politics. People saying "I think this law is bad" is a critical part of the exact democratic process you seem to hold in high regard. That's how you get a consensus among the electorate that can push representatives to oppose future surveillance legislation and repeal existing stuff.
(If you replied to the wrong comment, and meant to say this to somebody proposing overthrowing democracy or whatever, disregard my comment, obviously!)
Because here, we have a series of people who don't like the law (potentially for good reasons).
If the law is like that, it's because we have a "majority" (unless democracy is cheated) who voted for such things (additional control during plane boarding, to have border guards, to allow spying on private messages, etc).
The "majority" defended their right; the right to feel safe.
A bit like someone who does Open Carry in a state who doesn't want you to show weapons.
It may be not dangerous if you openly have a weapon, but other people still voted against that for their own reasons.
Opting-out isn't "making a scandal".
You can both opt-out and "talk with the people who make the laws", one doesn't preclude the other.
> If the law is like that, it's because we have a "majority" (unless democracy is cheated) who voted for such things
That is an idealistic view not grounded in reality at all.
> other people still voted against that for their own reasons
You are describing a direct democracy, not the representative democracy that actually exists.
There are plenty of examples of laws, existent and nonexistent, whose status has little to do with the preferences of the general public. One need only look where there is a conflict between the general public’s interest and that of the government. Surveillance is prime territory.
"They already have your photo". Yes, I know. I gave it to them in exchange for documents that grant international travel privileges. The rules/laws also say I can opt out of face rec and are posted on that big ass sign. I exercised my rights as a citizen to apply for documents within the rules allowed. Now I am excising my rights to the part that says I can opt out of having my pic taken every time I want to get on a plane.
I would like more clarity on the storage of the bio info derived from the photos. My guess is they keep updating profiles every time they take the pic, but discard the actual photo. This is not why I opt out, but like the salami slicing up-thread, I would guess they are waiting for everyone to get use to the pic at TSA before removing the opt-out clause and letting everyone know they are storing it to update profiles - for your safety. I am just waiting for that big leak, and then massive bio id fraud that will be harder to clean up than it is now. I know someone that has been a victim of id fraud (complete nightmare), I can't even imagine how one would clean that up once bio fraud becomes the norm.
There's another point of view though that says that the aviation system is particularly fragile, and of course it has a history of being used for acts of extreme violence.
So there's a compelling state interest question here. Like I think people definitely DO and SHOULD have the right to be secure in their own homes, in their personal papers, and to be free from surveillance of their personal life.
I'm extremely amenable to the idea that you should be able to "exercise your rights, for any reason you please and without having to explain yourself" in that regard.
I think it's also clear that the rights one has are going to be circumscribed when participating in the aviation system.
So it's more a matter of degree than principle.
It doesn't matter for my purposes whether you agree with this as a principle.
It's not that they took my picture at the DMV to put it on my license. It's the idea that through this picture, they're going to decide if I can fly or not, and I have no process to challenge that determination.
> So I don't really understand the privacy concerns here
Why is the government allowed to decide if I can fly domestically or not?
> that is different from the biometrics they already have from your ID photos?
Why is my biometric data required to fly? This is why I can't fly. I refuse real ID. I refuse a passport. These are not prescriptive rights the government has over my affairs.
> You're also obviously already being constantly recorded by surveillance cameras in the airport
Do they also have my drivers license information?
Have _we_? What mechanism did _we_ decide this by? Why is there zero alternative mechanisms for boarding a flight if I refuse to share my "biometrics" with the state?
> but it does bring a peace of mind
We were given specific intelligence on the 9/11 attackers and their plans before they were enacted. The "shoe bomber" was let on a plane and only stopped by alert passengers. Private plane passengers do not have to go through security checks. Your peace of mind is a total lie.
I actually have taken up the habit of wearing a surgical mask through security simply for this purpose, right up until I've opted out and they have my ID in hand. When they ask me to lower it I do, but not until I've opted out.
I understand it's possible to construct a 3D representation of my face using only still photographs, so it may be in vain, but I'll wear the mask and admit it may be pure ignorant superstition.
???
Most masks don't have a one-way valve that only filters your exhalation, leaving inhaled air unfiltered. Any given mask is going to be roughly as good at filtering incoming air as it is at filtering outgoing air.
Wait, what is this? I've never seen anything like that, normally they just check the name on the ID matches the boarding pass.
You're saying they literally had a book of all state IDs?
You're saying they literally had a book of all state IDs?
…unless you’re not a US citizen, in which cases we retain the image forever. You can’t opt out.
[1] https://www.cbp.gov/about/congressional-resources/testimony/... [2] https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/202...
The system needs active backpressure.
(I always ask to be opted into them because they seem to understand my cardiac device and give me a green light, whereas the metal detectors always trigger, followed by a yelling contest where they are yelling at me to take shit out of my pockets and I'm yelling that I don't have anything in my pockets and have a cardiac device)
0) For years and years and years, European prisons and airports refused to use them because they were deemed to be largely ineffective.
1) They're very, very, very expensive.
2) As mentioned above, they're ineffective. Explosives in a body cavity or a dense hairdo, or spread thinly across one's skin cannot be detected by these devices. Early on there were also demonstrations of fairly-reliable methods of storing weapons that would have been detected by a metal detector on one's person so that they could not be detected by the scanner.
3) When checkpoints get backed up and the lines get too long, TSA often bypass the scanners AND patdowns by running huge numbers of people only through metal detectors.
4) When they were first introduced in the US, they were obviously sufficiently-high resolution to get a clear nude picture of you.
5) No thought had been put into ensuring that these nude photos were not stored... and the only way this was discovered was by some researchers getting a hold of one and finding all of the nude photos of travellers on the thing's storage.
6) It was very, very obvious that TSA screeners were using the pornoscanners to perv on attractive travelers. I used to fly a fair bit and I often heard smoking-hot babes and dudes talk about having to go through the scanners multiple times because of a "glitch" or a "bad scan".
The claim is that points four through six were addressed by making the on-scanner screens show a paper doll with a "region of interest". I have zero faith that the scanners stopped storing full-resolution scans on the machine's local storage, and zero faith that checkpoint personnel are unable to access that storage. I also note that even years after the paper-doll update, checkpoints had a habit of refusing to run children under 13 through the scanner, and usually ran families with kids so young just through a metal detector. This absolutely is not evidence of data storage, but given how insane the US is about data handling regarding kids under 13, it sure is suggestive of it.
In the US they were enabled by a former TSA agent, gone contractor, and selling it back to the TSA
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/36lg/penn_jille...
Aren't tasers certified not to interfere with pacemakers and similar things?
They don't interfere with pacemakers.
They can cause arrythmias, and even cause respiratory arrest.
They're probably more likely to cause such things in people that need pacemakers.
Tasers were tested on four healthy pigs with pacemakers .. All OK.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/circ.118.suppl_18.S_...
isn't as cut and dried as some might claim.
Aren't tasers certified not to interfere with pacemakers and similar things?
see: https://ir.jetblue.com/news/news-details/2018/Your-Face-is-Y...
(your face isn't your boarding pass, your face AND your boarding pass is your boarding pass)
https://www.tsa.gov/contact-center/form/complaints
The process is optional and you were coerced.
https://www.tsa.gov/biometrics-technology/evaluating-facial-...
In my opinion faces are really not very good ID. I think it could also be distracting from the wayyy scarier types of identifying you like the storing of DNA for simply being arrested... not even convicted of a crime... forever...
this was the same play book with milliliter wave scanners, which are now proven to not be completely safe but who cares. at first you could opt out. then opt out was the same as mandatory patdown. then opt out meant an extra 30min wait by the xray scanner... etc. now its fully not an option.
meanwhile i bet the 911 hijackers would have zero problems getting pre check or whatever other private scamer is selling the no-scan boarding these days.
lastly, yeah, this is totally so they do not need a warrant to unlock your phone if you have face unlock. in the most plain and obvious Kafkaesque "he did provide the facescan willingly your honor. not once he opted out, which was always an option".
That's verifiably untrue, unless they've changed this in the last week or two, and you'll need to provide some documentation if that's the case. I've always opted out, and I've never had anyone try to tell me that I couldn't.
and sorry if you cannot understand why countering reports of the exception with the rule is not helpful. thats how you get things like whitelivesmatter.
If you can cite some evidence that your impression is the rule, that might be helpful. My own experience, having opted out and gotten the pat-down every time I've flown since the new scanners were introduced, is that the process has not really changed at all over the years, and opting out has never come close to causing a missed flight.
The TSA is as effective at keeping weapons out of secure airport areas as the tech industry is effective at keeping the CEO from clicking a phishing link.
I have never gone through a body scanning machine. Not once.
Opting out still works just fine.
Wouldn't that be Orwellian? Which Kafka story did I miss?
Wouldn't that be Orwellian? Which Kafka story did I miss?
I'm not trying to prove you wrong, but if you have any links, that'd be cool to include.
As an aside, TSA Pre lines just have normal metal detectors. It's worth paying for it just for that IMO.
(It also frankly showcases that this is all dumbass security theater, but whatever)
While looking around I also found this handbook: https://books.google.se/books?hl=en&lr=&id=OVRFDwAAQBAJ&oi=f... which is quite informative.
They're not going to trace my fingerprints to what activity I was up to before flying an airport.
You know normal American stuff.. buying porn, accepting political literature, spending too much time in a public bathroom, and then going to the gun store.
My husband's workplace tried to force him to enrol in biometrics along with the rest of his company. It was just for doing timesheets. We'd have fought it if it were for identity verification and security as well, but no, it was just for bloody timesheets. Giving away immutable biometric data to a crappy third party company who has data breaches every six months just for bloody timesheets just felt extraordinarily ridiculous and audacious. My husband did encourage his colleagues to consider not signing it but nobody gave it much thought (or was worried about being fired).
We recently needed to verify our identities to a financial institution and they pushed hard to use a (different) third party biometrics system instead of the good ol fashioned just not doing that. We needed to provide them with all the normal ID documentation anyway. Why the hell would we sign up for biometrics on top of that?
I suppose my point is that people generally choose the path of least resistance (understandably). Turning the tides on biometrics garbage being normalised, the default, and probably the only way in the future is something I can't really see happening.
"Probably X, but depends on the implementation" isn't very reassuring.
I, on the other hand, worked at a gym where members checked in with fingerprints instead of cards. Full scans showed on the till screen when people came in.
Of course, I’d like to see auditing of the device and data to confirm everything.
I didn't really expect an explanation but I did ask why the business was prioritising something so expensive and seemingly unnecessary when they have three half implemented tech solutions rolled out across the country that would improve productivity massively if finished. I was being rude asking them that but I was curious, and they had continually responded to simple and clear questions and concerns about infosec with such garbage as 'but the whole company is doing it' and 'you're creating a lot more work for one of the ladies in the office because we're forcing you to use paper timesheets now instead of any of the logical options available to us. You should feel so bad at all the extra work you're making her do'. They couldn't even pretend to take the questions we asked seriously. They were the ones that kept interrogating for why he was never going to allow it; the only reason these questions were asked was because they kept pushing. It was such an insulting waste of our time. Hell no can they be trusted. Aside from management and HR being rude, threatening, and patronising (hardly unique), it's otherwise a pretty good job he enjoys.
He went overboard in terms of harassment and intimidation but he did not win. Fuck that guy.
Also who cares whether the photo is immediately deleted? The metrics are what matter and those are kept.
It’s like your right to write a check or pay in nickels as well. But people get annoyed because you exercising your right and preference inconveniences them. Maybe also why people get annoyed by bicyclists going 15mph in a lane they legally get to use.
There’s lots of things that are correct and right but others don’t like much.
The agent has probably been trained by law enforcement in "compliance tactics": shame, cajole, embarrass, and intimidate the person who's refusing to do what you demand of them so that they do what you demand.
The agent could have done what agents in more-civilized countries consider to be their job and continued to process the returning citizen as they were entitled to be processed. He chose -instead- to delay the returning citizen and everyone else by throwing a coercive tantrum.
That said, I don't envy their job. But it seems to be a systemic attractor of asshole.
Border guards in other countries are often very polite.
The retired cops who will charge your department $100k for "training" will absolutely tell you they are teaching you how to detect liars.
Actual studies have shown their techniques (things like microexpressions etc) are not only ineffective, but make you WORSE THAN RANDOM CHANCE at detecting lies. A person who has received no "training" in these stupid systems are better at detecting lies.
But cops love other cops and former cops, and have a shitload of money in their budget for stupid nonsense training like "Killology", and apparently have absurd and unscientific worldviews that they refuse to escape. So they keep booking the retired cop who tells them "that hoodlum who you feel is sketchy is definitely sketchy so trust your instinct" and do not book the scientist who tells them "actually everything you know is mostly wrong, and you shouldn't ever trust your gut".
My issue is if any private company gets to use it or store it. I will never join Clear and I tell everyone I meet not to trust them.
Clear is the easiest way to fly and I’ll never go back (until it’s as packed as TSA pre…).
You don't have to give your personal data to any company, while to government you are forced to do it. It's huge difference.
I get to the front of the line, tell the lady "I'd like to opt out" - she looks at me like I was speaking Algonquin. So I repeat "I'd like to opt out". Her - "What are you talking about??". So I point to the sign sitting two feet away from her and say "your sign says the face scan is optional and I can opt out???"
"Just say you want a pat down, we don't know what you're saying".
To say their training on this being "optional" is lacking is quite the understatement... You have signs telling people what to tell the agent, verbatim, and the agent acts like they have no idea what you're talking about... speaking of big government at its finest...
It makes more sense if you think about it as a giant jobs program, but one that detracts from society instead of adding to it.
>Unemployment ended with war production for World War II, as millions of men joined the services, and cost-plus contracts made it attractive for companies to hire unemployed men and train them.[19][page needed][31]
>Concluding that a national relief program was no longer needed, Roosevelt directed the Federal Works Administrator to end the WPA in a letter December 4, 1942. "Seven years ago I was convinced that providing useful work is superior to any and every kind of dole. Experience had amply justified this policy,"
> I get to the front of the line, tell the lady "I'd like to opt out"
Come on man, you're talking to humans that have a lot going on in their minds, including your security and everyone else's. They can't do perfect Bayes inference to figure out what's going on in your brain. What the heck are you opting out of? Democracy? Your marriage? Life itself? Realize none of those are positive indications of someone who's likely to be a safe traveler. Try to make things easier on them.
Just saying "I'd like to opt out" with no added context on what you're opting out of is really following the instructions like a computer would. It makes you look like the programmer in those jokes who buys a dozen loaves of bread because he was told "buy a loaf of bread; if they have eggs, get a dozen".
They've won.
Isn't it just literally taking a photo, like any digital camera?
To me "scanning" implies a 3D point cloud. Apple's TrueDepth camera, with a projected dot cloud, that it uses for Face ID -- that's scanning, as opposed to just a photo.
Are airports actually performing 3D scans now?
Or are they still just normal digital cameras, but people are calling it "scanning" because they want it to sound scarier than "photos"?
The quality/accuracy is not like an actual 3D scan.
But I'll certainly place it in an intermediate category... either "stereoscopic photos" or "spatial photos" if you want to use Apple's name for it.
I just think "scanning" should be reserved for, you know, the things we traditionally call scanning. That are more than just photos -- stereoscopic/spatial or not.
I think that's actually a really interesting question.
To me, intuitively, it's pretty clear that if you took 100 photos of someone's head being rotated 1° each time, to put together a model of their face, that's a scan.
It's also clear that, intuitively, just 2 photos, or even 4 photos at 25° each, is not a scan. They're just a few individual photos.
All of which feels pretty analogous to, how many pixels does a bitmap need in both dimensions to call it a photo?
A 4x4 bitmap is not a photo. While a 100x100 bitmap certainly is, even if we'd call it thumbnail size. But we'd all agree it's a photo.
So where's the transition? I'd suggest a value of 20 is kind of a gray area threshold. A 20x20 image maybe you can say is starting to turn into a photo. Similarly, a collection of 20 images taken at regularly spaced angles maybe you can say is starting to turn into a 3D scan.
I’m also the person who consistently opts out of airport body scanners too, much to the embarrassment of whomever is unfortunate enough to be travelling with me. It is my petty indignation- if you want to violate me then I’m going to make it resource consuming for you also, should I have the capability.
Reactions of the airport staff are surprisingly mixed, many don't mind at all - though universally they will force you to wait for 10-30minutes, though Gatwick staff in particular consistently repeats that “this won’t always be possible”, which is a weird statement to make to be honest, but I've travelled through there many times and they try to talk me about of it this way.
By participating in Global Entry and opting into CBP and DHS/TSA "one to many" credential and identity proofing (colloquially "facial recognition"), it makes my life much easier while traveling. If I have strong data security and privacy concerns along the lines of "this will eventually lead to dystopian government interaction outcomes," the only place that is solved is at the ballot box and within the legislative and legal frameworks. The databases relied on for matching already exist [1].
This WAS solved at the ballot box. The law written by our elected representatives requires airport security to allow a reasonable opt-out[1].
> DHS ensures alternative processing is available to resolve match or no match outcomes. The mechanism or process to opt-out and complete alternative processing may not impose additional burdens or requirements on the individual beyond what is necessary to complete the verification process.
Many of the responses in this thread are indicating that the implementation of this opt-out is excessively burdensome, such that opting out could easily cause a traveler to miss their flight.
We should all be concerned that the authority granted an extraordinary enforcement power over a functionally mandatory part of modern life ignores limitations that that we "made at the ballot box" because it finds them inconvenient.
[1] https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-09/23_0913_mgmt...
> This WAS solved at the ballot box. The law written by our elected representatives requires airport security to allow a reasonable opt-out[1].
Perhaps I did not express my thought cohesively, let me expound. By "solving" in this context, I mean with regards to data collection, retention, storage, and processing of sensitive personal information, biometrics specifically (quoting myself below):
> If I have strong data security and privacy concerns along the lines of "this will eventually lead to dystopian government interaction outcomes," the only place that is solved is at the ballot box and within the legislative and legal frameworks.
Current state, the event of you traversing a checkpoint is logged in a system of record, with a human proofing your credentials against your live face. These systems automate the proofing process. Your photo exists in government databases (state for state ID and driver's license, and federal for passports and global entry/CBP). Your event of travel is logged, and also provided ahead of flights to TSA/DHS via PNR data exchanges. My government, today, already has the necessary information to cause me harm without using facial recognition to compare my ID to my live face and PNR.
What material risk to privacy does swapping a human checking your ID with facial recognition incur in this context? And how does opting out materially improve your privacy posture? It very well may be that the opt-out is excessively burdensome, but if the opt out is ceremony and provides no actual benefit, then why do I care if it is excessively burdensome? Because someone believes the opt out process is providing a benefit when it, in reality, provides no benefit? That is a belief system challenge, not an objective risk to be assessed and potentially mitigated. Fear is a feeling, danger is real. If there is evidence that the opt out process materially improves someones privacy and data security posture, certainly, then it is worth expending effort to defend opt out use and overly burdensome efforts to exercise. Otherwise, I find it inconvenient to argue over the travel security checkpoint equivalent of an elevator close door button (in this context, the opt out process).
Fight for and expend effort on effective improvements in outcomes, not ceremony.
People like me are probably padding the stats in favour of a small but consistent "preference". There's no way they're not watching the statistics and making decisions based on that. If they think a small enough minority opt out they will remove the option.
> By participating in Global Entry and opting into CBP and DHS/TSA "one to many" credential and identity proofing (colloquially "facial recognition"), it makes my life much easier while traveling. If I have strong data security and privacy concerns along the lines of "this will eventually lead to dystopian government interaction outcomes," the only place that is solved is at the ballot box.
That's not my concern, petty bureaucracy and trampling the dignity of people nonchalantly is.
What I'm referring to is much larger than just the TSA, it's a global industry selling security theatre, imagining the techniques of tomorrows bomb threat are anything they've seen before, forcing you to throw your liquids away and then charging you through the nose for water on the other side.
"But you can take an empty bottle, there are fountains!"
That's the discretion of the security agent you happen to get, I've had bottles thrown out because they had "flOz" written on the side despite being empty.
I travel a lot, so it's probably just the fact I want a consistent experience above else, and the rules are different depending on airport and very selectively enforced. Though they might argue that this is a feature to thwart terrorism.. (he says while rolling eyes)
[1] https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/tsa...
[2] https://www.sciencealert.com/the-close-door-buttons-in-eleva...
And a very on topic quote from the above citation:
"Perceived control is very important," Harvard psychologist Ellen J. Langer told Christopher Mele at The New York Times. "It diminishes stress and promotes well being."
Protest definitely does change something. The only problem is that not enough of us are doing it.
If you're opposed to these scans, it is your moral duty to opt out, and to make everyone's life harder while doing it. That's exactly how things change.
I am simply the messenger for the bad news, based on observations of the system at scale. “If the people would just rise up” is not an argument, unless you’re going to show evidence that there is a scenario in which a non insignificant amount of the traveling public opt out, which is…unlikely in my opinion.
See y’all in the related thread 1-3 years from now when this is common practice.
You sure as shit don't need everyone to opt-out. You just need enough folks standing around in a queue for the supervisor to get uncomfortable with how long the line is getting for them to dispense with the theater and start waving everyone through only metal detectors.
Let me know and we'll spin it up so we're accountable for our predictions: https://longbets.org/
I am not and was not making a prediction. I was using my field observations to refute the implied assertion that everyone would need to refuse automated screening in order to cause that part of the screening to be bypassed by folks who are not refusing to participate.
(another fun fact: the companion product for connecting TBBS to the nascent Internet was called an IPAD - Internet Protocol ADapter)
(also fwiw, everything in my original comment is true. it's not LLM drivel or anything)
- There is no longer the paper form you filled out on the plane/prior to customs. You fill out online forms (visa or ESTA in my case) months before you travel.
- Upon arrival customs and immigration took my fingerprints and photo. My passport and ESTA were in order and I have traveled to the US several times before (and well, I am a privileged ethnicity from western Europe), and the agent didn't do any questioning about purpose of travel, accommodation, etc this time. That has happened to me on previous trips though. This type of questioning always makes me feel uncomfortable and afraid to say something wrong, so that was a relief. I would certainly not begin to argue with the agent about opting out of the biometrics at this stage.
- My checked bags were not inspected by customs. On a previous US trip I did find a notice that the bag had been inspected.
- On departure, at the TSA bag check there were the full body scanners you step into and raise your hands. I didn't see any information about opting out anywhere, though I wasn't actively searching for it. There was nothing in particular that made me consider that my face was being scanned in detail here.
- At the gate I was surprised that boarding check was via facecam. This was the first time I have seen this and I had not considered that my pictures from before could be used this way. Everywhere else and all other times I have traveled you board with the barcode/QR on the boarding card and without any ID check.
So in my experience (as an admittedly privileged traveler) the system is optimized for efficiency and "convenience", but certainly not for privacy. There isn't much information to find about what you must do and what you are able to opt out of. Just do the same thing as the person in front of you in the line, ad infinitum. I know I should be more concerned about privacy in general, but the stress of travel and anxiety about doing something "wrong" and somehow getting in trouble with these agencies make me (and probably most others) accept these things.
I really can’t wait for tomorrow’s hackers using the next generation of Sora to make fake video of me doing god knows what [1] thanks to the CBP’s next data leak.
And I can’t opt out, because I’m an evil foreign national. Or rather I can; it just means giving up on travelling to or through the US.
[0]: https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2020-09/O...
[1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/04/asia/deepfake-cfo-scam-ho...
If a few educated people on hacker news opt out, it means nothing. The practice of invasive biometric scanning will be normalized by the masses who just comply. Just like with other existing security procedures. Soon the scans will be mandatory but also everywhere else in society. I’m not sure what a good defense is against this.
[1] https://www.ajl.org/campaigns/fly
[2] https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/factsheets/facial-recognition...
That said I do think it should be default opt-out.
A pat down is invasive, but the pat down is ephemeral by its own nature.
Just wait until the TSA announces they trained an AI model on sorted naked images.
Untrue. For years there absolutely were.
<https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/tsa-full-body-scans-privat...>
> Unless you consider x-rays and other similar imaging systems to create “naked” images.
These are used in medical scenarios with your fully-informed consent. TSA was absolutely not forthcoming about the capabilities of their checkpoint scanners, and they earned the moniker "pornoscanner" for a very good reason.
Additionally, even ignoring the fact that most medical x-rays are used to look inside of you rather than at your skin (why would one use a fancy machine for a surface inspection when the Mk. 1 eyeball is Right There?), the context is completely different in a way that's very, very important.
Erm, only if the private company wants to keep the data from the government? But given we're talking about surveillance companies that make their money selling surveillance records, I'm pretty sure they're eager to give it to the government (for a price).
The correct incantation is: "I would like to opt out of the millimeter wave."
If you do this, then someone of the same gender will run their gloved hands over (somewhat sensitive) areas of your body, then test the gloves for explosive residue.
At my age, I probably shouldn't care about any of this, but I don't like needless x-rays.
I've heard this before, but this really isn't how radiation works.
The higher dosages you're exposed to and the longer, the more likely the negative affects.
But it's strangely additive, like getting wet. Which is a poor analogy but the most fitting I can think of.
You might get "more wet" by standing in the rain than getting splashed with puddle, sure, but you're still increasing your "wet-ness" by not drying out before getting splashed.
Only this wet gives you cancer if you stay wet too long, or get too wet.
Yes, actually it is, at least as far as the risks of security scanners vs. flying are concerned. The radiation you get exposed to in an airplane at altitude is largely ionizing radiation. The radiation you get exposed to in security scanners is not. So in addition to the much shorter time of exposure, and hence the much smaller overall dose, the type of radiation in security scanners is much, much less damaging to your body even at comparable doses.
> it's strangely additive
I'm not sure what you mean by this, but if you mean that the additional radiation from security scanners is somehow "additive" with the radiation you are exposed to in the airplane, no, that's not correct. They're different types of radiation and do different things to your body. There's no cumulative effect between them.
Truthfully, the amount of radiation you are exposed to does accumulate its negative affects, we certainly consider it as such for every work environment for a reason.
You are confident in this, and more eloquent than me at 2am, whoever I cannot let that falsehood stand.
As far as ionising radiation goes, if its ionising then its ionising, there’s not “different types”- however the parent is correct that millimetre waves do not penetrate the skin and are considered non-ionising
What kind of radiation? If you mean ionizing radiation, the evidence, as far as I know, is mixed; some indicates there is buildup over time, some indicates that there are threshold effects and single doses below threshold, separated in time, do not accumulate. We do have lifetime dose limits as well as single exposure dose limits for such radiation because the evidence is mixed and we can't rule out that there are accumulation effects.
But if you mean non-ionizing radiation, such as is used in the millimeter wave security scanners, there is no evidence of accumulation of effects over time from low doses (i.e., doses that do not cause immediate harmful effects) that I'm aware of. Do you know of any?
It's not a cause for concern, no. Tons of people live and work at high elevations, in granite buildings, and many other places where the background ionizing radiation level is far higher than normal.
You'd do well to consult this chart: <https://xkcd.com/radiation/>, paying particular attention to the expected radiation exposure from background sources, comparing that to the "Lowest one-year dose clearly linked to increased cancer risk" amount, and also noting that the repeated phrase "All the doses in the $COLOR chart combined".
You'd also do well to clear fifteen or thirty minutes from your day and read this letter, published in 1997: <https://radiationeffects.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Rock...>. Do take it slow and don't skim. It's an essay written to be read, rather than for SEO, so you absolutely will miss important details if you skim.
Not that it isn’t additive, it’s that people don’t care like they don’t care that eating a banana vs eating another item [0].
And in the US, backscatter X-rays have found continued use in jails and prisons. There is actually one that is used in Cook County (Chicago) that is a conveyor belt you stand on to get a full 5 seconds of X-ray exposure. Opting out of the prison scanner may be possible depending on your circumstances, but undoubtedly more difficult
I always opted out of x-ray backscatter machines, but mm-wave scanners aren't worth the hassle.
https://www.propublica.org/article/tsa-removes-x-ray-body-sc...
The whole implementation of these scanners was layers of corruption.
Still worth it IMO - as long as they have to train people to maintain the manual process, its a signal that there are people out there who won't just fold.
I've walked out of the security perimeter to reschedule after a flight cancellation in an airport with <10 passengers in the terminal. Upon reentering I was "randomly" selected for an explosives swab despite passing the first time with the same bag and not walking more than 50 feet away from the TSA checkpoint.
I felt sorta bad for the TSA guy who had to grope my sweaty armpits to make sure I wasn't a terrorist somehow
TSA employees are not even allowed to wear dosimeters, as I recall
If they’re not prepared for passengers to opt out, the public needs to be aware and the only way they’ll be aware is by delaying hundreds of passengers directly behind you.
The government already has your picture, but letting them copy device data over is a much more significant invasion of privacy
Also kind of pointless too, because anyone with something actually important could just encrypt it, upload it somewhere, and wipe the device. Good luck putting the packets through customs
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/18/phone-d...
I’m also perplexed when my parent won’t give the State department their SSN, but received SSN benefits, and Medicare, and pays taxes to the IRS. They say they don’t want “the government” to have their data, but oddly think the government doesn’t already have a dossier on them.
I love the scans as they speed up security. I traveled recently, internationally to and from the US and it was nice to just scan my face and show my passport and not need to scan my qrcode boarding pass.
The more places your SSN is stored, the higher the likelihood of that information being misused by those with "legitimate" access, or stolen by malicious actors.
The same thing applies to pretty much anything about you (name, DOB, address, etc.), which should be sufficient reason alone to not want it spread around more than absolutely necessary.
I agree that SSN shouldn’t be collected inappropriately, but for purposes where it’s necessary, complaining that “the government” doesn’t need it, is silly, I think.
Citation extremely needed. Why would the government have a preexisting scan of my face?
Not to mention the data legally purchased from data brokers and illegally captured by NSA/etc.
A high rez image is a type of biometric scan if you’re using it for facial recognition.
Additionally, there is no oversight or information given about how that data will be used, sold, how long it will be kept for, etc.
If you want to be entirely complacent that's your choice. But it isn't 'silly' for those of us that understand what's going on to oppose it, and it's disingenuous to easy because we have drivers licenses there is no reason to oppose it.
This is wrong. The TSA cameras are steroscopic and capture significantly more detail.
Additionally, there is no oversight or information given about how that data will be used, sold, how long it will be kept for, etc.
If you want to be entirely complacent that's your choice. But it isn't 'silly' for those of us that understand what's going on to oppose it, and it's disingenuous to easy because we have drivers licenses there is no reason to oppose it.