DHS: Travelers flying on international flights from U.S. airports will soon be required to undergo facial scans before boarding their plane
The security measure is part of a new program by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that began in the summer of 2016, when DHS partnered with two airline companies, Delta and JetBlue, to introduce facial recognition systems on international flights.
Facial scanning will help both airlines and CBP (US Customs and Border Protection) agents
Travelers are supposed to sit in front of a camera that scans their face and stores their image before boarding their plane. The system will compare the facial scan with passport photos or other passenger images to see if they match the identity of the person recorded on each flight manifest.
Delta and JetBlue say the program will speed up boarding checks. Copies of the photos will also be sent to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) system, which detects people with fake or expired passports.
Tests for this new facial scanning system have been conducted since 2016 at airports in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York and Washington on select international flights.
The system is not supposed to scan American citizens. But it does.
DHS, through CBP, has already collected fingerprints and photographs from aliens entering the United States since 2004.
Congress and the Obama administration approved the expansion of this biometric data collection program to include travelers entering and leaving the United States by air, sea, and land.
Congress, and later President Trump through an executive order, clarified that this program should not include American citizens. However, tests conducted by DHS since June 2016 have also scanned American travelers.
According to a DHS report on the program's progress, the department is reportedly aware that they are scanning the faces of American citizens, contrary to the executive order of Congress and President Trump.
“If a U.S. citizen requests to opt out of TVS [Traveler Screening Service], their identity may be verified by an available CBP Officer through manual processing,” the agency said in a report in May, implicitly acknowledging that the faces of American citizens are also being scanned en masse.
The criticism of the program from US citizens and privacy groups does not seem to have had an impact on the DHS program, which gave an inhumane response stating that those who do not want their faces scanned should not travel.
“The only way for an individual to ensure that they will not be subject to biometric information collection when traveling internationally is to avoid traveling,” DHS said.
The system will become permanent from 2018
The facial scanning system is scheduled to officially launch in 2018 with more airline partners. The system will also be expanded to ports and land border checkpoints across the U.S. DHS said that photos of scanned faces are automatically deleted from its system after 14 days.
Of course, it should be noted that government agencies have used the database of photos of US citizens without permission in the past. The FBI used one of these databases to identify criminals.
Facial scans are not considered among the most accurate biometric identification methods, and many argue that incorrect identifications could ruin many people's travel plans or that some would automatically be placed on the US entry ban list.
