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Senators say TSA's facial recognition program is out of control

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Re: Senators say TSA's facial recognition program is out of control

#151

Post by remram »

bediger4000 wrote: post #29
quotemstr wrote: post #14

I'll take facial recognition over long TSA lines any day. I can't wait until we have full-throughput non-blocking walk-through security.

That will never happen. The long lines and inconveniences are the point, not a side effect. 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.

Unless you're old, then you get to keep your shoes. Only young people's shoes explode. It's science.

Re: Senators say TSA's facial recognition program is out of control

#152

Post by consteval »

chao- wrote: post #148
eesmith wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the line where you say "stop"? 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 those of us that don't follow your train of logic, can you explain what it means for "the rubber band to break" or for "one of the ropes to snap"? Is there something specific you have in mind? Or is this a vague foreboding sense that something, somewhere will eventually go wrong?

The problem with all these happenings is you're relying on the benevolence of our government. I would really prefer to not be beholden to how benevolent the government is feeling.

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.

Re: Senators say TSA's facial recognition program is out of control

#153

Post by kyawzazaw »

netsharc wrote: post #12

When entering China, they take your fingerprints, iris, and I guess face too... I was there in 2019, at one point I was at an airport, and a screen was bragging, "Stand where the camera can see your face, and we'll tell you which way to your gate.". It worked too, the screen displayed my name, flight number and direction to my gate. And implicitly, "We can identify you wherever you are.".

Also in singapore

Re: Senators say TSA's facial recognition program is out of control

#154

Post by kelnos »

tehjoker wrote: post #103
casenmgreen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that by this it becomes ever more difficult to get rid of an oppressive, dictatorial, unelected and violent Government.

tbqh, first if the insinuation is that China is not democratic, that is only true in the sense it is not a liberal democracy with a conservative wing represented (a good thing), but it is still a democracy with elections. 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 Israe…

Insinuation? It's a fact that China is not a democracy.

Re: Senators say TSA's facial recognition program is out of control

#155

Post by kyawzazaw »

onetokeoverthe wrote: post #135
to-too-two wrote: post #115

I can’t believe it has gone this far. I was flying out of Logan airport (Boston) and had to have my face scanned right boarded the plane. There was nothing about opting out. It seemed like I didn’t comply, I wasn’t flying. I hate this. Feels so wrong and dystopian. They need to abolish this. It’s so unnecessary.

They're not going to put up a sign about opting out. You have to say no.

they do put up a sign. saw in DCA, AUS, BOS

Re: Senators say TSA's facial recognition program is out of control

#156

Post by kelnos »

quotemstr wrote: post #14

I'll take facial recognition over long TSA lines any day. I can't wait until we have full-throughput non-blocking walk-through security.

Anecdotal, but I haven't experienced shorter lines or faster ID checks since they implemented this facial recognition system.

Re: Senators say TSA's facial recognition program is out of control

#157

Post by kelnos »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #45
Zanni wrote: post #9

Serious question: why is this bad? Is it just the 3% false negative rate? I don't see the negative privacy implications of face recognition when the alternative is to present your face (via photo ID) anyway.

I enjoy traveling to Berlin for vacation, as it's a totally different atmosphere around privacy. Default payment is cash, your entry and exit from train stations is not tracked (surveilled perhaps, but you do not tap-in/tap-out or god forbid tap your credit card every time you step on a train like SF or NYC), and it's against the law to publish photographs of someone without their consent. Ask IBM what becomes of dat…

In both SF and NYC you can still buy transit passes anonymously with cash if you so desire.

Convenience won, though, it seems.

Re: Senators say TSA's facial recognition program is out of control

#158

Post by kelnos »

0x457 wrote: post #64
mistercheph wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automation and scale? You can't imagine how technology that allows a small number of people to automatically surveil billions of people can enable horrors that would be more difficult if you needed to use a labor force of hundreds of thousands of humans?

What that has to do with TSA Checkpoint at the airport? How many people go to through that checkpoint isn't dictated by how automated it is - it's dictated by how many people are flying. All this thing does it speeds up process of you getting through TSA.

It doesn't, though. I haven't seen shorter lines or faster-moving lines at SFO, for example, since they implemented facial recognition. And it seems like they have the same number of people staffing the ID checkpoint as they did before as well.

Re: Senators say TSA's facial recognition program is out of control

#159

Post by godelski »

refurb wrote: post #150
godelski wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people unfamiliar with this topic, it is commonly referred to as "Turnkey Tyranny". 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 s…

This is basically the intent of the structure of the US government. 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=Gg…

I agree, that its the intent. The downside of the US is that it moves slow. But the upside is that it’s the oldest country in the world if you measure by (codified) constitution. You might think European countries are older but Germany didn’t exist till the late 1940’s. If you really want to stretch it you can argue early 1800’s but that’s facetious.

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)_/¯)

Re: Senators say TSA's facial recognition program is out of control

#160

Post by yuserx »

X-Istence wrote: post #90
netsharc wrote: post #12

When entering China, they take your fingerprints, iris, and I guess face too... I was there in 2019, at one point I was at an airport, and a screen was bragging, "Stand where the camera can see your face, and we'll tell you which way to your gate.". It worked too, the screen displayed my name, flight number and direction to my gate. And implicitly, "We can identify you wherever you are.".

When entering the United States they also take fingerprints and a picture of your face.

That was the main reason why Europeans were forced to switch to a passport with biometric data (some fingerprints and photo) on a chip more than a decade ago.
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