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
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.
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?)
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.
I don’t live in the US. Maybe that’s the difference?
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"
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.
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?
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.)
-- 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.
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.
It doesn't matter for my purposes whether you agree with this as a principle.
> 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.
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.
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.
???
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.
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.
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
Aren't tasers certified not to interfere with pacemakers and similar things?
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.
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/36lg/penn_jille...
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".
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'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)
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.
While looking around I also found this handbook: https://books.google.se/books?hl=en&lr=&id=OVRFDwAAQBAJ&oi=f... which is quite informative.
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.
Wouldn't that be Orwellian? Which Kafka story did I miss?
Wouldn't that be Orwellian? Which Kafka story did I miss?
I have never gone through a body scanning machine. Not once.
Opting out still works just fine.