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JetBlue has started using facial recognition instead of boarding passes

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Re: JetBlue has started using facial recognition instead of boarding passes

#101

Post by bayesian_horse »

I have to admit my naivety on this, but: What exactly is the problem here?

Both the airlines and the involved law enforcement have a right or even a duty to know who you are when you are boarding the plane. They also have facial recognition data, either from a passport photo or putting a camera in front of the check-in, and arguably they have a right to that.

People walk around with their faces all the time. They post it on social media. Would it be a problem if a security guard lets you through a gate because he recognizes you? Is it more troublesome that all security guards of the airline now can recognize you at the gate?

I think we need to be more precise about what exactly is spooking us and why. Using facial recognition for boarding security is not as big as a problem as facial recognition being used for law enforcement or whatever they do in China now. But that's a topic for legislation and regulation. If companies are prohibited from storing personal data without consent, that should be enough to stop almost any legal infringement.

If such legislation is impossible, because your government is completely unaccountable, or because companies are unaccountable to such laws, then that is a much bigger problem than the potential for violations of privacy...

With regards to privacy I keep coming back to the conclusion that it is more important and effective to improve and enforce regulations than to beat up on particular technologies.

Re: JetBlue has started using facial recognition instead of boarding passes

#102

Post by ehnto »

duckface wrote: post #94
ehnto wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that ubiquitous facial recognition allows for near seamless tracking of individuals and explicitly without a warrant or their consent. It's an important milestone because it moves us from a "reasonable book keeping" level of tracking to full blown seamless tracking and again importantly, without our consent. To imagine it a bit more viscerally, imagine instead that the system had no cameras and inst…

you people are pretty stupid. ATMs have tracking, point of point of sale has tracking, your phone, internet it's all tracked and linked back to you.

No one said they didn't track anything already. But they don't have the full picture yet. Many people pay cash for things. Currently no tracking if you just visit somewhere and don't pay for anything. Not everyone has GPS enabled on their phone.

Ubiquitous facial recognition fills in all of this missing data well enough, and without you doing anything but walking out your front door.

Re: JetBlue has started using facial recognition instead of boarding passes

#103

Post by bayesian_horse »

skilled wrote: post #33

I am guessing that the bigger concern here is that this is an 'enabler' tactic to expand facial recognition in other areas of our lives. And if this is the case, then there definitely needs to be some kind of ratification. Maybe this is unrelated, but it's starting to feel like every bad accident in this world is affecting us in this very strange way. For example, I was very surprised to find that Sri Lanka cut every…

In the particular case of Sri Lanka there is the problem of periodical violence between religious groups. Buddhists against Muslims and Christians, mostly.

I think a temporary ban on social media is appropriate to mitigate such violence in the immediate aftermath of such a terrible attack.

Immediately after the right-wing terrorist attack in Norway people thought it was committed by Muslims. Some people began utilizing the attack to blame Muslim immigrants. Some incidents of violence and verbal attacks have been reported.

So, in the particular case of the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka, I'm not yet ready to judge the government action/inaction.

Re: JetBlue has started using facial recognition instead of boarding passes

#104

Post by keiferski »

ben_w wrote: post #82
nilskidoo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is incredibly naive. Wealth is the only thing that guarantees anonymity.

Anonymity? They get their own Wikipedia pages and personalised conspiracy theories. Even “mere” multimillionaires like my first boss after graduating got that plus endless personal fan letters.

Anonymity is not the same as privacy. Mark Zuckerberg is known worldwide and has no ability to be anonymous. However aspects of his private life (his Facebook messages, for example) are far more private than the average person.

Re: JetBlue has started using facial recognition instead of boarding passes

#105

Post by bayesian_horse »

Taniwha wrote: post #71
Jerry2 wrote: post #64

A related story that hasn't received much traction on HN: >US wants to use facial recognition on air travelers leaving the country https://qz.com/1598148/us-wants-to-use-facial-recognition-on...

wow a 97% success rate ... that means that 3% will be arrested for overstaying their visa on return .... The US is kind of unique in that it doesn't have immigration officers who stamp your passport when you leave ... so you have no proof that you have left ... it also means that there are no transit lounges in the US, you can't land in SFO from say Australia and get on a plane to London without passing through US cu…

Such technologies always have an error rate, and these error rates are taken into account, by and large.

There is a huge potential to harass people using such technologies, particular such people whose complaints are most easily ignored. But that is more of a problem of holding the government accountable for such behavior in general, rather than trying to stop them doing their arguably necessary job in this particular instance.

I'm generally against regulation or restriction of migration, by the way. But I'm also in favor of the authorities having a general idea who's coming and leaving.

Re: JetBlue has started using facial recognition instead of boarding passes

#106

Post by skohan »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #101

I have to admit my naivety on this, but: What exactly is the problem here? Both the airlines and the involved law enforcement have a right or even a duty to know who you are when you are boarding the plane. They also have facial recognition data, either from a passport photo or putting a camera in front of the check-in, and arguably they have a right to that. People walk around with their faces all the time. They pos…

> I think we need to be more precise about what exactly is spooking us and why.

What's spooking me is the normalization of facial recognition technology for identification without adequate public agreement over what the limits of its applications should be.

A machine recognizing me is a lot different than a human recognizing me. If a machine can recognize me, there can be cameras posted at every street corner, and some organization can reconstruct my movements based on where and when my face is pinged by the system.

It's sort of possible for humans with access to surveillance footage to do that, but the amount of human effort required to accomplish it makes it impossible to do at scale. An automated system could do this for everyone, always.

Re: JetBlue has started using facial recognition instead of boarding passes

#107

Post by swish_bob »

rikkus wrote: post #77
iamphilrae wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve just flown London to Aberdeen (UK) and back with no need for ID. You certainly can still do this internally. An exception may be if your terminal is mixed in with international flights, then you’ll be lumped in with them at security.

I didn’t know this was still possible. I used to fly Nottingham Glasgow and it was just like getting on a train or coach. I had wondered why it needed to any different now but I see that it’s because the terminal in EMA is now both for internal and international.

And to Ireland, as well. I once flew to Dublin and only realised on the plane I'd forgotten my passport. Got through with my paper driving license, but I don't think I even needed that, strictly, although currently you need _some_ form of ID if flying into Ireland from the UK.

Re: JetBlue has started using facial recognition instead of boarding passes

#108

Post by chungleong »

skohan wrote: post #83
ben_w wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither SFO nor JFK airport were as remotely dilapidated as Nairobi airport when I saw them.

JFK does seem quite dated when comparing to most European capitals, or large Asian hubs. There are some high-standard modern terminals in the US too though.

By "most European capitals", I presume you're excluding Paris :-)

Re: JetBlue has started using facial recognition instead of boarding passes

#109

Post by tareqak »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #101

I have to admit my naivety on this, but: What exactly is the problem here? Both the airlines and the involved law enforcement have a right or even a duty to know who you are when you are boarding the plane. They also have facial recognition data, either from a passport photo or putting a camera in front of the check-in, and arguably they have a right to that. People walk around with their faces all the time. They pos…

What if the system makes a mistake? There is another article currently on the front page that is just the sort of mistake that some people fear could end up much, much worse[0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19726528

Re: JetBlue has started using facial recognition instead of boarding passes

#110

Post by skohan »

chungleong wrote: post #108
skohan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JFK does seem quite dated when comparing to most European capitals, or large Asian hubs. There are some high-standard modern terminals in the US too though.

By "most European capitals", I presume you're excluding Paris :-)

I haven’t flown into Paris recently but there are plenty of exceptions: Berlin’s not beautiful either (though it’s one of my favorite airports).

But still the standard in Europe seems higher in general than North America.

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