TSA Plans to Use Face Recognition to Track Americans Through Airports

> losing your social security or credit card numbers to fraud is nothing compared to losing your biometrics. While you can change those numbers, you can’t easily change your face.

What does this even mean? Last time I checked anyone can take my picture any time I am in public.

Is their theory that someone is going to use a mission impossible face mask to impersonate me and then get me put on a terrorist watch list?

How would having machines doing facial recognition change anything from having humans doing facial recognition?

If anything the machines will be more accurate, so face theft will be less of a problem, but I have never heard of any real life cases of face theft, so I don't actually think it is or will be a problem.

> However, due to the fact that immigrants and people of color are disproportionately represented in criminal and immigration databases, and that face recognition systems are less capable of identifying people of color, women, and young people, the weight of these inaccuracies will fall disproportionately on them.

This is a fascinating finding and definitely a subject of concern.

You can read the research this is based on here: http://openbiometrics.org/publications/klare2012demographics...

What I would point out here is that even if there are race and gender discrepancies in algorithmic performance for facial recognition these systems are being used as a replacement for humans who are not exactly known for being free from racial and gender bias.

At least the facial recognition system is not going to share see through images of you with their colleagues or give you an enhanced pat down because they find you attractive.

Even if the algorithms are less accurate for some groups it should be possible to adjust the algorithms to require a higher level of certainty for those groups so that no group experiences a higher rate of false positives than any other. That is something you can't do with people that you can do with a machine.

Fixed it for you. I know for a fact at least 2 asian countries which are either actively using or trialling this, and not just at airports. Both already have fairly comprehensive facial recognition DBs of their citizens (smile for your driver's license picture!)

I've also heard anecdotal accounts of people who stay too long airside at SIN being questioned by airport police. They walk right up to them - pretty obvious what's going on. My only surprise is that they would reveal their capabilities so obviously, but maybe that's a deliberate strategy ("we know everything so don't try anything").

It's only a matter of time before basically all governments are doing this. The tech is there.

The option is already there for this - TSAPre