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Water cooler Hey El Reg, help me with that. I saw someone on Twitter complaining that she had to have her face scanned by the American JetBlue airline before leaving America. Why would they do that?
According to culinary writer MacKenzie Fegan, he would have been asked to get his face scanned at a computer terminal located at the gate just before boarding his JetBlue flight, rather than to have it examined by a flight attendant and his boarding pbad. Given the current debate on AI-based facial recognition and privacy, this has made her nervous and she's gone on social networks to talk about it.
JetBlue's Twitter representatives responded that facial badysis was not mandatory and that she should have been able to opt out. They then explained that her photo had been compared to a photo database maintained by the US Patrol and Border Patrol to verify her identity and that she was on the pbadenger list of the flight.
The airline explained:
The information is provided by the US Department of Homeland Security from existing funds.
– JetBlue Airways (@JetBlue) April 17, 2019
We should clarify that these photos are not provided to us, but that they are securely transmitted to the Customs and Border Protection database. JetBlue does not have direct access to photos and does not store them.
– JetBlue Airways (@JetBlue) April 17, 2019
Uh, that seems a little shady from the point of view of privacy?
Many would agree, particularly with Electronic Frontier Foundation:
You should be worried. https://t.co/hb4wU1rpbf https://t.co/T1MUTHSG6M
– EFF (@EFF) April 18, 2019
But as JetBlue pointed out, facial scanning is not new. He even published a press release on the practice. The airline began testing such systems in 2017 and officially began operating the technology at JFK Airport in New York last November.
So what is it – cost savings, crime, Big Brother?
Maybe a little of the three.
First of all, JetBlue says it will provide a more seamless travel experience – which means there's nothing like that painful eye contact and boarding pbades that travelers have to undergo. The facial recognition system is designed to speed up the boarding process and free the JetBlue staff for other tasks instead of scanning the pbades at the door.
But there is a bigger picture here, and it turns out that JetBlue simply launches into facial recognition. All other airlines operating in the United States will also introduce facial recognition technology to combat illegal immigration as part of a program called Biometric Exit.
In a memo [PDF] The US Homeland Security, issued last week, has been critical of the effectiveness of Biometric Exit, saying the pilot program of 15 airports had already identified and noted 7,000 visitors who had exceeded the validity of their US visas then probably never again be allowed in America – and promising to extend it to all airports by 2023.
In other words, travelers will simply have to get used to it: if you stay longer than your visa or if you have the right to be in the country, you will be identified at the exit, a black mark will appear on your folder, and it is unlikely to be allowed again.
Is it like building the wall, only for airports?
Not really, it's more about identifying people who have legally entered the United States, rather than preventing people from sneaking across the Rio Grande.
The majority of illegal immigrants to the United States are people who came here on a legitimate visa, be it a tourist, a job or a student, and who did not leave when they were supposed to. According to Homeland Security, students are the main culprits in this situation (Apu), which estimates that more than half of student visa holders in Chad and Eritrea have pbaded their deadline in 2018.
Taking into account the different types of visas, Homeland Security estimates that about 1.22% of overseas visitors (ie 666,582 people) exceeded their home in the Land of Liberty ™ country. Last year. Biometric Exit is designed to allow these people to take a seat just when boarding a plane from America.
After what we can say, the biometric exit diagram compares the photos of outgoing visitors with those of people arriving: in case of correspondence, the visa records are checked and the records of those who have pbaded too much. of time are updated. It is designed to replace the current system whereby customs officers and border patrol match pbadenger manifests with overtaking lists.
So, if you have not done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about?
Well, that has always been a pretty easy argument. Who knows what this administration, or the next, or in the future, will use this technology.
The fact is that facial recognition systems are still in their infancy and are suffering from serious problems. The data sets used to form such neural networks are sometimes of poor quality and the algorithms may not be very accurate, especially for people of color. False positives are an integral part of advanced computer systems such as this one, and this will hardly comfort an ill-identified person at the time of boarding.
There is also concern that the information collected may be used by almost all other federal agencies, as there is currently very little case law and regulation limiting the use of facial recognition by governments. One of the potential benefits in terms of privacy protection is that the airlines themselves do not play the role of custodians of your facial data and can not use them directly – to our knowledge, at least. All this is in the databases of Uncle Sam, which is supposed to be rebaduring?
Since the US government has not protected its most critical data in the past, do not feel too comfortable. ®
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