Senators say TSA's facial recognition program is out of control
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
Its just how things work there. It feel more malicious to pretend its not happening
It's a long, but interesting talk.
secondly, if people surviving a literal genocide in Palestine can resist the most technologically sophisticated, surveilled, and completely enclosed death camp ever constructed by the U.S. and Israel, you can figure out how to deal with cameras.
> you can deal with cameras
Still rather not.
Bear in mind when you answer that scientific surveys show American "democracy" is an oligarchy with popular opinion being almost entirely disconnected from policy.
Yes, the US is an oligarchy of rich people with enormous influence over our sham system. That’s why I don’t want the system pointing cameras at me; I know the person behind the screen doesn’t represent my interests.
China isn't a democracy. The word doesn't apply when your choices for candidates can only come from one political party that pre-approved them. Don't be absurd.
It's a one-party state in which variations of style among different senior figures are still forced together under the rubric of a general monolithic dogma that's only marginally beholden to public opinion, and very much subject to the whims of dominant figures. Also, many elements of the Chinese state are at least as conservative as the worst you could see in the U.S, just without the religious overtones. Truly, go study the subject and it's history a bit better.
What's happening in Palestine, or more specifically in the Gaza Strip, is not a genocide. It's a tragedy of destructive military strategies by Israel, but calling it a genocide is demeaning to the definition of real genocides, which you should also study a bit better.
>the most technologically sophisticated, surveilled, and completely enclosed death camp ever constructed by the U.S. and Israel
Death camp, really? Also, if you're disgusted by technologically sophisticated, heavily surveilled, enclosed camps, then you really might want to find out what the Chinese "democracy" is doing in the Xinjiang Uyghur Region...
The news likes to allude to China's "genocide" in Xinjiang, but no one is dying.
At most they can stretch it to a "cultural genocide" but even that's not true as the native culture is not being repressed, only religious extremism.
However it is true that thousands of Palestinian civilians are being killed and those same media are afraid to call it out.
Nonetheless, the deaths of civilians in the Gaza Strip also aren't a genocide. They could be defined as a war crime, or if you want to be really generous to Israel, as unfair collateral damage (a phrase I mostly detest in this context) but the Israeli state isn't deliberately targeting the Strip's ethnic Palestinian population for eradication.
Total eradication, no.
It just wants to see it the resident population vastly reduced. And what it is deliberately doing is creating conditions favorable to this outcome, which it refers to as "voluntary transfer":
https://www.972mag.com/intelligence-ministry-gaza-population...
It is about the belief that you "don't give Mr Rogers any power you wouldn't give to Hitler." Basically no matter how great you think your current leader is, you recognize that they will not be in power forever (or that they may not be good forever). Democracy, autocracy, oligarchy, whatever your system of government, there is a singular truth: all men die. All things change. Obviously this policy can go too far, but personally I think it is worth considering not just how good a policy or power can be, but how much harm it can do if abused or misused. It is easy to ignore this part because we want to believe people are good and have good intentions. Because we see the advantages and get excited about them. Because it is harder to think about abstract scenarios. But it is an important thing to think. You need not think your government is evil or nefarious to still be concerned with turnkey tyranny. In fact, the more faith you have in your government, the more you should be concerned. Because it is at that time that people are less likely to keep their guards up, and it is that same time that hostile actors look to take over. There is no absolute defense against malicious leaders, so it takes constant care.
High degree of separation of powers (unlike most other democracies, the executive is separate from the legislative and there are two independent legislative bodies). High level of agreement across multiple bodies before a law can be passed (House, Senate and President).
I thought Scalia's explanation was a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd--UO0
The point is to be highly distributed. Many keys to power. It makes it hard to get shit done when people are unwilling to work together (read partisan hacks). Which is what makes it strong against takeover, even getting half the keys will still grind your takeover to a slow roll. That’s petty robust to adversaries.
I have a hot take. My faith in the system strengthened with Trump and especially the stupid coup. Because I saw a man try very hard to take over and despite having a coalition that was practicing party over country, he still couldn’t. Though how many keys does he have now and did he do the legwork to make it work a second time? That we’ll see. But even then, I think it tells a successful story of robustness. That it took a few hundred years of growing power and extreme partisanship to break it. Clearly it can be and needs to be improved but clearly it’s got something of value. Something to learn from and iterate from rather than rework from scratch. I’m not aware of any country that’s survived under such extreme circumstances, but I’m not knowledgeable enough here. Please correct me but cite so I can learn more. Defining what is a country, let alone a continuous empire is very messy business with a lot of national narrative tied in (we can even argue the US’s fragmentation would disqualify, but the constitution stayed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)
I think a better way of phrasing it might be "a continuous system of government". Germany certainly existed before the late 1940s, but the system of government was obviously very, very different.
> Defining what is a country, let alone a continuous empire is very messy business with a lot of national narrative tied in
In the latter mindset, Prussia, the German Empire, etc., really have nothing to do with modern Germany, because Germany is not a kingdom or empire, it's a country that was founded in 1945/6 by Allied occupiers. The only messy thing about it is the reunification in the early 1990s, because two formerly separate countries (DDR and BRD), with extremely different systems of government, were stuck together, but under the same system of government as the western side, which really makes it an annexation.
Iceland would very much like a word about this. But your point in fair, maybe phrased a bit wrong.
>> Please correct me but cite so I can learn more
> The current constitution was first instituted on 17 June 1944 when Iceland became a republic; since then, it has been amended seven times.
The official document also says 1944[0]
CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF ICELAND
(No. 33, 17 June 1944, as amended 30 May 1984, 31 May 1991, 28 June 1995 and 24 June 1999)
[0] https://www.government.is/library/01-Ministries/Prime-Minist...
By that I mean that the modern world is incredibly complex, yet in the house, each house member only gets 1.25 million per year for staff. Yet despite that they are supposed to create and manage the rules and regulations for a 30 trillion dollar economy.
It's impossible, even if you have good faith of all actors. This leads to lobbying groups providing texts for laws, because they have the resources to provide people to write and review them.
It also leads to shifting the bureaucracy of the regulations to the executive branch, because that is where there is the money to hire staff/expertise/ and regulate something as large and complicated.
My pet peeve is that each congressional rep should be receiving ~25 million for staff, then use that to build up in house expertise, vs having everything under the executive.
Congress has ceded too much power.
Thanks this is a really great concept. I'm going to use this for the slippery slope fallacy fallacy.
But if you didn't complain about the trains, maybe because you didn't take them, you didn't get killed. It was fine.
Maybe things are actually kinda bad, but you're just not willing to admit it to yourself because you aren't complaining about the trains.
In the US, we complain about the trains. And if the gov't is spying on us with facial recognition, we're going to stop them.
I wish I still had this childish optimism.
Taking a photo and fingerprint is pretty standard everywhere.
Travel by plane/DMV applications normalized fingerprinting.
What’s next? Semen and blood samples as well?
The terrorists have won. Fear has ruled the major powers of the world. And the current major power of the free world is a puppet and an all around idiot.
That would seriously hamper ~50% or so of the worlds population from travel
Maybe I'm misremembering the iris scan. If it did happen, it could be because there were loads of Mongolian students about to embark on their next semester of studies in China.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_System_for_Travel_A...
[1] https://www.yvr.ca/en/passengers/navigate-yvr/customs-and-im...
At least if you are EU citizen, you don't need to interface with humans.
I believe, though not certain, that you can opt out simply by going to the human booths (right?)
If they want to entice us with convenience, the facial recognition should allow you to just stroll through without talking to anyone.
The facial recognition is based on the biometric data collected when you got your ID, the ID you presented to pass through security. The ID with your name, address, date of birth, and uniquely identifying number on it. The ID which is associated with your boarding pass. The ID they scan (or they scan the boarding pass which is associated with your ID) prior to letting you through security.
Using facial recognition changes nothing, absolutely nothing, except that it reduces the amount of time spent at the checkpoint.
It does not grant anyone access to any information they do not already have.
It does not impede the traveler in any way.
It does not change, at all, any aspect of one's privacy whatsoever.
"But I don't wanna..." doesn't seem like a defensible position.
Comparing an ephemeral photo taken of you to your government credential at the TSA checkpoint is a temporary formality. At some point, the government credential presentation will be unnecessary.
https://www.cbp.gov/travel/clearing-cbp/passenger-name-recor... (Control-F "What information is collected?")
When I got my license, which I can use to board a flight in my country I did not give fingerprints or an eye scan. They have my photo, DOB, name - not more.
This "it changes nothing" attitude is unproductive.
It also doesn't improve anything:
An agent comparison of you vs the id is still considered to be the gold standard. When this system fails, you have to default to the agent's comparison. This is a slow down compared to the previous scenario.
The time for an id comparison isn't the bottleneck in security. It's the physical actions used to go through the TSA and the built in inconsistency to prevent people from speedrunning the screening.
It has been normalized since the 1920s, when the FBI's central fingerprint repository was created.
And the end goal isn't the system that currently exists. It is a system in which the movement of passengers isn't halted. Someone watched 1990's Total Recall and said "we need a security checkpoint like that".
Also, the "Overton window" is a libertarian bullshit response to the natural shifts that occur in society, usually trotted out whenever libertarians get pissed off that "muh freedom" no longer excuses their bigotry and they can't make "because their knee-grows" jokes anymore.
That, instead of "people who think that this is an erosion of privacy are wrong" is exactly what I am saying.
Face scanners at airports change exactly and precisely, with no room for qualifications, unequivocally, irrefutably, nothing.
So by your logic we should just fully accept its further normalization with absolutely no pushback or regard for any notion of private life and activity?
>It has been normalized since the 1920s, when the FBI's central fingerprint repository was created.
This is a blatant bullshit comparison that you can't possibly be ignorant enough to compare to modern real-time data collection accessible to many levels of government for tracking you and your personal details down to a deeply minute level almost as you live them. The U.S government of the 1920s and for decades after had its repositories and files on people, but in any given moment they were unlikely to have any clue what you were doing or where you were and lacked the means to easily know these things unless they were specifically targeting you for a particular reason.
That by the way is as it should be, a world in which a powerful state that could easily at some point turn actively hostile in some unfair way can't also passively monitor anyone and everyone as it pleases. A world in which the state, if it wants to monitor someone heavily, needs to make an effort to do it, and through means that can only be sanctioned by specific legal procedures, for specific activities, based on specific legal motives.
No, the Overton window is not "libertarian bullshit" about natural shifts in society. There's no natural law that makes total surveillance axiomatic to a society, and normalizations of dangerously abnormal permissiveness are very real in many social contexts.
>usually trotted out whenever libertarians get pissed off that "muh freedom" no longer excuses their bigotry
What the fuck are you even talking about at all here? What's bigoted about wanting personal freedom or defensible privacy? So because some random hypothetical racist libertarian likes to make off-color jokes, defending privacy is only something done by racist bigots?
Yes.
That, instead of "people who think that this is an erosion of privacy are wrong" is exactly my logic.
Face scanners at airports change exactly and precisely, with no room for qualifications, unequivocally, irrefutably, nothing.
Sorry I hurt your libertarian feelings. Some more YouTube videos on stoicism may help. They won't, but keep thinking they will.
They make it opt out because there are always a few people who object[1], so this is a safety valve.
If everyone opted out ("I am Spartacus") then it would stop and they would have to switch to less efficient means. (If it weren't less efficient then they wouldn't need this one.)
As John Gilmore points out at http://new.toad.com/gnu/ :
"If you politely decline to show ID whenever someone asks (or demands) it, and continue politely declining regardless of how they escalate, you will discover what your rights are. You'll be surprised. You'll get away with it. Most of the people who were asking for it have no right to demand it. They've been relying on your voluntary cooperation. They forgot to tell you that part; but you just found it out for yourself. Sometimes you may discover that you didn't have the right to live, move around, or do business in your own country without government-issued documents. That's very interesting knowledge to acquire first-hand too. If you haven't recently tried exercising your right to exist and live without government permission, are you sure you still have that right?"
[1] In one of the author Robert Heinlein's biographical accounts he walks out of a hotel because they demand to see id at registration. He went to another hotel which did not.
Every state id picture is run through facial recognition, and that data is processed to detect duplicate people and other issues. Every passport has a picture which is digitized for facial recognition.
This is a good thing, as it potentially disarms the stupid RealID fiasco with respect to ID and airports.
There is no privacy benefit to document validation.
When I opted out of the scanner once, I had to wait about 20 minutes, and then the TSA agent comes over to do a "pat down" instead, but is going inappropriately slow and squeezing my body, and saying things like "I'd bet you opted out because you like this." I regret not immediately calling them out and filing charges.
I had a phase where I would always wear this "cease your investigators" shirt, never had any comments but yea stood by the machine for 5 minutes or so, never considered the machine would be radiating outward as well as inward, but yeah, mostly did it as a small protest, thought it worth demonstrating you don't have to comply.
https://neongrizzly.com/products/cease-your-investigations-i...
https://preview.redd.it/travel-safe-for-thanksgiving-v0-i3ja...
But as an organization, they clearly have a culture that allows or even encourages people to openly abuse and harass travelers, and punish people for exercising their rights. When I was being sexually harassed by a TSA agent, the other agents standing nearby allowed it to happen and said nothing.
They're trained to operate in an unethical way.
The amount of agents who act like that and then start to get shy when you smile and go through with a patdown is pretty comical.
https://www.flysfo.com/about/airport-operations/safety-secur...
"You're damn right I like it, usually I have to pay for it."
I expect that one day it won't be optional, but I'll avoid it while I can
The most recent time, which was years ago now, when I was leaving the country (I'm not a US citizen, and had finished working on a H1-B).
In the EU, there's delay - they have to get someone, you go to a room, pat-down. Unremarkable.
In the US, delay, they get someone - but the "pat-down" was so forceful I had trouble keeping my balance. It seemed to me to be deliberately excessive.
Fortunately, I do not live in, and do not need to travel to, the USA.
When I pull the pre-check random scanner check, I opt out and will go straight into small talk with the agent, they don't like it any more than you do, (maybe one or two might) but the majority they want it over with as quickly as you do. My personal tactic is to go into my story of being sexually molested at a checkpoint at an airport in Spain. It was very unexpected and extremely uncomfortable, including the smile after as though waiting for me to drop my number. I can joke about it now, and it gives TSA agents an opening to assure me that is not their intent without being weird about it. They're also annoyed that people who do things like that give them all a bad rep
The GAO found that the ability for people to understand that Americans are not required to go through the biometric exit was non-existant and the experience of opting out was very poor.
What this means is signage was not posted that indicating for Americans this is an optional process and people forming the "requirement" were not educated that it is optional for citizens.
Yet, the experience is that people forcefully push people into to posing for the camera with markings on the floor, the lack of opting in/consenting to it, and prevent people from being aware of what's going on. (Yes: You can opt out .. walk up to the board area with your passport open to your photo page)
I honestly blame Apple for pushing FaceID, as it completely normalized facial recognition on a mass scale. Nobody thinks about this at all anymore.
(No, it's not entirely Apple's fault, but I do think this point warrants more notice/discussion)
Apple showed how this can be done without compromise.
A combination of on-device-only FaceID and app-by-app opt-in to even trigger a validation, with on-device federal ID validation of some kind, putting you in control of presenting a cryptographically signed ID, would, in fact, be ideal for both convenience and privacy.
IF you're going to require ID, that would be a fine way.
The REAL issue is whether ID should be allowed to be required at all to move around, or if you have the right to anonymously assemble (and travel for assembly) within your own national boundary. That's the goalpost to debate.
Sure, but also no.
I am outright stating that facial recognition did not need to become so normalized, and everyone getting used to it for the device in their pocket did no good in this regard.
> IF you're going to require ID, that would be a fine way.
Or we could just, y'know, do it the way we've been doing it for decades now.
We’ve known for over a decade that DHS, FBI, CBP, and local police buy location data.
https://www.propublica.org/article/no-warrant-no-problem-how...
One reason I left Facebook early on was that I didn’t like getting tagged in photos the next morning after everyone would get home from parties. Too bad for me, as long as you have a friend who don’t value your privacy, there is nothing you can do about it.
Add to this any public event, where they are well within their rights to take your picture and match it against known threat actors and the only way to not play this game is to be a hermit
I hated this too, but there was an option to disable it. I know because I used it for that very reason. I don't know if they removed it; I left Facebook probably around a decade ago and it was there when I left.
So you need to be in TSA PreCheck, and you gave them your photo and fingerprints when you voluntarily enrolled in that program. They are probably using your passport biometrics if those are available as well.
https://www.tsa.gov/biometrics-technology/evaluating-facial-...
2. If people stand up for decency, they might get it.
And then letter is correct. I had a guy retaliate for declining. He said I was making his job harder and that he'd make my life harder in return. I'm still waiting. Surely, as a TSA employee, he's got lots of connections in government. A lot of these people are unstable.
> They already have a little data, I fail to see why I shouldn't let them have everything.
The other form of fighting back against this, pushing lawmakers, seems far more effective
> The other form of fighting back against this, pushing lawmakers, seems far more effective
> just makes life slightly less convenient for the TSA staff
These people are standing between me and a free glass of mid wine and the most comfortable place I’m going to be for the next <y> hours. They also have basically unlimited power to make my day worse, delaying me, searching me, doing all kinds of real violations of my rights.
Frankly, the quicker robots take their jobs the better, I hope this speeds it up.
> the last thing I want to deal with is making a protest at the checkpoint before I can get to the lounge.
>> TSA Administrator David Pekoske in 2023 in which he said “we will get to the point where we require biometrics across the board.”
> They also have basically unlimited power to make my day worse, delaying me, searching me, doing all kinds of real violations of my rights.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller
I must also remind you that the reason they have this power, the reason we have this security theater, the reason we have a "safety system" that kills more people than it saves[0], is because we've passed the buck. The reason we're at this state of exhaustion _RIGHT NOW_ is because of our accumulated debt.
So at the minimum, if you're too tired to protest, at least don't try to stop those who are trying to make your life better. Those who are trying to reduce the problem you are frustrated by. If you cannot make the effort, fine I won't judge, but if you convince someone else to choose apathy, then I will. Because frankly, it means you have made __MY__ life harder. Because you have sided with those you are complaining about.
> Frankly, the quicker robots take their jobs the better, I hope this speeds it up.
We're humans. We're __capable__ of thinking through complex things. I hope we do not squander this gift we have.
[0] https://slate.com/business/2012/11/counterproductive-airport...
This type of take almost looks like a virus.
The answer is what happens when you don't match. I have long hair and a beard in my driver's license photo. I don't now. The license I had before I was able to renew without ever having to go in person for 15 years because of holes in California's laws about renewing driver's licenses remotely for anyone who has ever served on active duty military out of state. I have very rarely had a driver's license photo that actually looked like me, and TSA agents have commented on it pretty frequently, saying I don't look like the person on the ID I'm presenting. They let me through anyway, because what else are they supposed to do? Identification cards are in and of themselves somewhat of an element of security theater in that sense. The data are frozen in time whereas reality may constantly change.
The only reason this was ever the case was the fact that your identification photo was not regularly updated to match your current face. If the TSA is constantly taking more photos of you, then potentially it can be. The obvious next phase in a program like this is to store the photos and build a current and updateable model of what every person in the US looks like, eventually not needing the ID cards at all.
Hard to think of their intentions as anything more than theater for their voter base.
You then hold a committee meeting and hopefully that solves it.
You finally change federal law and usually that solves it.
If it doesn't you have to start arresting people to foment change.
This is not a gentle tool.
Government _is_ the people. It's inappropriate to use it as a tool to bully the people.
Either that or they took a page out of the big tech playbook where the plan was to boil the frog all along.
And the senators’ letter quotes a talk given by TSA Administrator David Pekoske in 2023 in which he said “we will get to the point where we require biometrics across the board.”
Sibling comment covers this well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228984
I hate this. Feels so wrong and dystopian. They need to abolish this. It’s so unnecessary.
You have to say no.
I’ll believe it when I see it. Something like six “final deadlines” have passed for this to happen, and every time it’s kicked years down the road. It’s an unfounded mandate with real end-user costs (in my state an REAL ID costs twice as much to obtain) that no longer seems to have a base of support in Congress.
People needing a job?
Except, quoting https://www.marketplace.org/2016/08/11/pros-and-cons-privati...
> Contractors provide a more flexible workforce for his airport, and on top of that, it’s easier to show people the door, he said.
> “If employees are not performing, they can be dealt with appropriately, better or more effectively on a contract side than a government side,” Sprenger said.
> Labor unions say the real reason airports want to go with contractors is simple: to cut costs. James Mudrock is the president of AFGE Local 1230, the union representing TSA workers in Sacramento, California.
There was a time when America's security forces did not routinely surveil its own peoples' movements.
In the 1990s the airplanes jumped at the opportunity to have required id checks so they could take control of the secondary market.
It was still possible to buy a ticket like "E. Smith", but that option was cut off a few years later.
Ask IBM what becomes of databases full of people's names associated with their movements.
Germany is still facilitating an alleged genocide. The only thing that has changed is the profile of the victims. The situation now is even worse, given that practically everyone in the world knows what’s happening but life is going on as normal.
> Ask IBM what becomes of databases full of people's names associated with their movements.
None of this matters. If a state wants to commit a genocide, they will. Collection of IDs being there or not is a minuscule bump in the road there.
Convenience won, though, it seems.
But it's still a valid concern as to whether or not this new system is at least as secure and privacy-respecting as the old one.
All this thing does it speeds up process of you getting through TSA.
How many shoe bombers does the TSA catch in a day? 0. In a month? 0. Since the only shoe bomber? 0. We still take off our shoes. Same with underwear bombs. 0. We still partially undress and do the nude-a-tron.
The point is, we could already ditch the lines, we don't want to.
There's nothing magical about setting off a bomb on a plane as far as terrorizing a populace goes. Bombs in the mazes before "security" would be effective, as we learned at the Boston Marathon.
There's very good practical reasons the terrorists chose airplanes and not trains or buses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...
If you want to destroy skyscrapers (and maybe kill thousands or tens of thousands in the process), and not just murder a few dozen people, train-related terrorism isn't going to work for you.
(During the pandemic, I had a job that let me--I mean, a friend of my choice--do my own e-verify/I-9 form. When you enter your passport number, the e-Verify system spits out a digital copy of the photo you sent it to prevent counterfeit or altered photos.)
I just don't understand how one more potato quality still capture of your face, that by definition is very similar to those they already have, changes the equation much.
People started complaining about cameras, and airport id checks, and facial recognition, and REAL ID, and incentives like PreCheck to support mass fingerprinting for a decade or three.
At some point the rubber band breaks, or at least one of the ropes snap.
For example, President Elect Trump has plans to reinstate Schedule F and require loyalty tests for all government employees. If you post liberal content on your facebook, or maybe you fail the test even once, boom - you can't get a government job ever, because your face and identity is linked to your political leanings and those political leanings are now the Enemy of the American Government.
Or you could use this technology to automatically sort people, putting the ethnically-vague looking people into camps while they await rulings to see if they're illegal or not.
Of course this is all extreme, like fascist extreme. Suppose this doesn't come true, which is what we're all hoping for. Are you confident there will never be an evil government from now until the end of time?
If your answer is anything other than a resounding yes, then you should be opposed to these advancements on principal.
You're working for a client who wants some changes, and more changes, and more changes, and is difficult to work with. At some point you may have to fire the client. As a simile, this is like a rubber band being stretched to the breaking point.
Or, the new boss is a very bad manager. Some people quit to move to another job. Each one is a rope snapping. If enough ropes snap - if enough people quit and are not replaced fast enough - then that department can no longer function.
To clarify further, "rubber band to break" is because a rubber band can be stretched and stretched, but not without limit. Once it has reached its limit, it breaks with a snap, and cannot easily be fixed.
For the metaphor "one of the ropes to snap", think of a cargo net carrying a heavy load. Each rope has a different tensile strength, and the load is not perfectly balanced. It's possible for a heavy load to break one rope, but the net still hold because the load shifts onto the other ropes, which have reserve strength. However, this should be a warning, because as more ropes break the less reserve there is, until the net is no longer able to hold the cargo.
I don't know what you mean by "eventually will go wrong" in this context where several senators say that things have already gone wrong.
Additionally you threw in a false equivalency: But a ton of things are going on..you're useless in fighting it. On top of that you threw in an accusation that "if you don't then face longer lines".
The cameras that are above aren't good enough to do a confident identification of an individual. They're great for tracking where unique blobs go.
The picture they are doing a comparison against is a profile picture and consistent lighting. Additionally the old picture that is on your license is a much older photo. The thread here is that the people who are taking your image now are updating their models and maintaining the models of what you look like. With that they are able to retroactively and perform future lookups on different visual datasources about what you did. (Gas stations, stores, weed shop, adult toy store, walking down the red light district, being on a train, etc)
Flying privately requires none of this. Which is how you know they're not serious about security but about control of the masses.
Also, the thing you're ignoring, and perhaps why you fail to understand the problem, is you haven't bothered to ask what the false positive rate is. Would you enjoy being stopped and arrested by very cocksure police simply because a computer made a mistake and they refuse to believe that?
In Germany, there is no way you'll get on a commercial airfield without going through security, and if you're not a passenger but an employee or a pilot, you'll need a comprehensive background check.
Only exemption for now is ultralight aircraft because these are about as dangerous as a car (or if you just compare kinetic energy, even less dangerous because they're barely half a ton in weight.
Your "commercial airfield" may actually be two airfields in one. This is not uncommon. There is a "commercial" side which is where public carriers usually work and there is a "private" side which is where individuals and often cargo works.
Aside from this there are plenty of private airfields in Germany.
> ultralight aircraft because these are about as dangerous as a car
The cool things about vehicles is you can put things in them. Things like explosives. The incredibly low tech version of this is currently in use in some parts of the world, and that is where you attach a mortar to a drone, then go drop it on a target.
That autocratic states readily pick up on it should give you pause, but instead of questioning the efficiency of a security apparatus, it is excused because the status quo is already shitty.