Facial Recognition Checks In At the Airport

The airlines - and the facial recognition purveyors - claim it will make check-in faster and safer.

The question, per usual, is what will be done with the data - and to what degree do customers have any rights related to that? JL


Scott McCartney reports in the Wall Street Journal:

Facial recognition is rolling out at boarding gates for international flights at big airports in Europe, Asia and the U.S., even as privacy concerns grow. The industry is pushing facial recognition to relieve increasing overcrowding on the ground. Faster passenger processing at check-in, security and boarding means less gridlock. Delta says facial recognition shaves 10% off the time it takes to board an international flight. Airlines and airports argue that when you travel by air, the government gets your picture and personal information. You’ve ceded your privacy already.
Travelers have to face a new reality—their faces are rapidly becoming their IDs and boarding passes at airports.

Facial recognition is rolling out at boarding gates for international flights at big airports in Europe, Asia and the U.S., even as privacy concerns about the technology grow.
JetBlue is doing it in New York; Delta in Atlanta, Minneapolis and Salt Lake City, with the rest of its hubs added by the end of 2019. International airlines from new entrants like Norwegian to old hands like Air France also are scanning faces to board airplanes in the U.S.
In Atlanta, Delta is using facial recognition for international passengers in Concourse F at checked-baggage drops, the TSA checkpoint and boarding gates—anywhere you would normally have to show your passport or driver’s license. You just look into the camera. The system identifies you and knows where you are going, so out comes the bag tag. You don’t need a boarding pass or passport at security. Just look into the camera and head to the body scanners. At boarding, smile and you get a receipt with your seat assignment.
It’s optional at each stop, but the airline says it’s faster and easier.

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“Our customers like the process,” says Gil West, Delta’s chief operating officer. Surveys show 72% of Delta customers prefer facial recognition to existing procedures, he says. The airline has seen only 2% opt out so far.
“It’s really about reducing friction and making things seamless and easy for our customers,” Mr. West says.
Airlines and airports argue that when you travel by air, the government gets your picture and personal information. You’ve ceded your privacy already.
The industry is pushing facial recognition to relieve increasing overcrowding on the ground. As travel grows, faster passenger processing at check-in, security and boarding means less gridlock. Another factor: accuracy. Facial recognition algorithms have their failings, but the technology is more accurate than untrained gate agents eyeballing customers.
On average, Delta says facial recognition shaves about 10% off the time it takes to board an international flight. That’s because gate agents have to do more than scan a boarding pass for international departures. They are required to compare passport photos to faces to confirm identity and make sure every name matches the manifest.

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With facial recognition, a photo taken when you step up to the gate is sent to Customs and Border Protection and compared with a gallery of photos of people listed on the flight’s manifest, using passport photos for U.S. citizens and photos taken upon entering the U.S. for foreign visitors. If it works, a match happens in about two seconds.
Passengers who want to opt out of Delta’s system simply hand their passport to the gate agent the old-fashioned way. Same goes if the computers fail to place your face after a scan.
The explosion of facial-recognition technology, used for everything from unlocking phones to scanning crowds, has some cities considering bans. Some in Congress are calling for investigations and privacy experts question whether substituting biometrics for paper documents is a good idea on such a large scale.
More cameras mean “we are heading into a world where the government, or a conglomeration of corporations, knows potentially everywhere you’ve been, who you were with and what you were doing all of the time,” says Adam Schwartz, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco nonprofit that promotes digital civil liberties.
One of his group’s concerns is that opting out may put you in a slow lane, in effect punishing you for seeking some measure of privacy.
Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit research organization, says facial recognition can easily be misused unless strict rules are in place.
“It is a very intrusive identification technique, because it’s general-purpose. That technology being used by CBP could be used by other federal agencies for other purposes,” he says. After airports, the government might take it to federal office buildings where people today can enter without being identified, Mr. Rotenberg says.
CBP says airline use of facial recognition isn’t an expansion, only a better way to confirm who’s onboard.
“This is not a surveillance program. This is replacing a manual check that goes on today,” says John Wagner, deputy executive assistant commissioner of CBP.
On average, the system accurately matches identities more than 97% of the time, CBP says. That rate is higher than that of many facial-recognition tests, which have shown to be less accurate in identifying people with facial hair or dark skin, for example.
Mr. Wagner says CBP’s accuracy is improved by good lighting, subjects standing and looking straight into a camera, and the limited comparison pool.
“We’re not noticing any significant error rates based on a specific demographic,” Mr. Wagner says. “Things like facial hair and glasses and hairstyles aren’t really impacting those rates.”
Your face is only compared with those of passengers on the same flight, making the search faster and reducing false matches, CBP says. The photos aren’t run against FBI databases or watch lists. Your name already was checked before you get to boarding.
The system doesn’t work well with children who have grown since passport photos were taken, or if you move and your picture is blurry.
CBP is building galleries on travelers only with government photos—no private sector or social media, Mr. Wagner says. If you’re a Global Entry member, for example, your photo is saved every time you enter the country. If you’re a foreign national, your picture is taken every time you enter the U.S. That photo is saved for 75 years.
CBP doesn’t allow airlines to save photos. The agency stores them for under 24 hours to make sure there wasn’t a problem with the flight.
On July 25, Delta Flight 295 from Atlanta to Tokyo had 283 passengers, according to CBP, and 266 had their photo captured, or 94%. CBP says that 6% who opted out includes military traveling on orders who aren’t required to have passport photos. The accuracy rate was lower than CBP’s stated average. Only 242 passengers matched through facial recognition, meaning the system succeeded 91% of the time.
Miguel Carunungan of Morgantown, W.Va., opted out because he’s generally concerned that privacy is eroding.“We don’t know what they’re doing with the information,” he says of facial recognition. “I think people think it is a cool idea and a lot of people opt in for it, but I just don’t know what the airline is using it for.”
Other passengers liked it.
“It was so easy,” says Phil Gibbs of Nashville, on his way to a technology conference in Singapore. “I think the convenience outweighs the concerns.”
Shawna Bush of Jackson, Miss., was on her way to Tokyo to see her boyfriend. The picture-taking at the gate was so quick, she wasn’t prepared and didn’t get to pose. “It’s no different than posting your picture on social media,” she says.
Delta starts boarding international flights 60 minutes before departure. The recent trip of Flight 295 actually had all passengers checked in and down the jet bridge after just 35 minutes, about 10 minutes faster than when boarding without facial recognition.
Airline-owned technology company SITA and others predict that facial recognition will spread to domestic U.S. travel. Mr. West of Delta calls domestic facial recognition a natural step. Government officials say they are studying that. They most likely will need accurate driver’s license photos from states, and not all states have photos that are high-quality or are willing to share photos with the federal government.
TSA could roll out facial recognition using passport photos, as it is doing for international travel, because a large percentage of travelers have passports. It could also work in conjunction with TSA PreCheck.
But already Congress is questioning the government rush into biometrics amid a lack of standards.
The public has “good reason to be concerned” about privacy, data security, transparency and accuracy, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, said during a recent hearing. “The American people deserve answers to those questions before the federal government rushes to deploy biometrics further.”