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.".
There's a famous saying about Mussolini making the trains run on time. The joke was that anyone who complained about the trains running late, which was an endemic issue emblematic of the financial failures of fascism (his government system), was killed.
But if you didn't complain about the trains, maybe because you didn't take them, you didn't get killed. It was fine.
Maybe things are actually kinda bad, but you're just not willing to admit it to yourself because you aren't complaining about the trains.
In the US, we complain about the trains. And if the gov't is spying on us with facial recognition, we're going to stop them.
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 singular truth: all men die. All things change. Obviously this policy can go too far, but personally I think it is worth considering not just how good a policy or power can be, but how much harm it can do if abused or misused. It is easy to ignore this part because we want to believe people are good and have good intentions. Because we see the advantages and get excited about them. Because it is harder to think about abstract scenarios. But it is an important thing to think. You need not think your government is evil or nefarious to still be concerned with turnkey tyranny. In fact, the more faith you have in your government, the more you should be concerned. Because it is at that time that people are less likely to keep their guards up, and it is that same time that hostile actors look to take over. There is no absolute defense against malicious leaders, so it takes constant care.
I am pretty sure this is the loophole Gödel found with the American constitution. It is pretty easy to turn the US government authoritarian, if you elect an authoritarian president.
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).
That's the intent, but evidently, (and sadly,) it doesn't work how it should. There's too much influence from moneyed interests and just too much bad faith participation and gaming of the various processes. It was bad when I was born and it's gotten ever more corrupt and dysfunctional since.
I think that the biggest issue is that congress is underfunded and has ceded too much control to the executive.
By that I mean that the modern world is incredibly complex, yet in the house, each house member only gets 1.25 million per year for staff. Yet despite that they are supposed to create and manage the rules and regulations for a 30 trillion dollar economy.
It's impossible, even if you have good faith of all actors. This leads to lobbying groups providing texts for laws, because they have the resources to provide people to write and review them.
It also leads to shifting the bureaucracy of the regulations to the executive branch, because that is where there is the money to hire staff/expertise/ and regulate something as large and complicated.
My pet peeve is that each congressional rep should be receiving ~25 million for staff, then use that to build up in house expertise, vs having everything under the executive.
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)_/¯)
>it’s the oldest country in the world if you measure by (codified) constitution
I think a better way of phrasing it might be "a continuous system of government". Germany certainly existed before the late 1940s, but the system of government was obviously very, very different.
> Defining what is a country, let alone a continuous empire is very messy business with a lot of national narrative tied in
Definitely gets fuzzy with definitions when we have things like Prussia, German unification, the German Empire, and all that. Especially, again, with the national narrative. It is messy business and I think we often pretned it is a lot cleaner than it actually is.
It's not that messy, it's just a disagreement about what a "country" is. You're thinking with the European mindset of "nation", where a country is defined by its borders, history, etc. The OP is thinking with the American mindset where the country is defined by its founding documents and legal principles. They're entirely different.
In the latter mindset, Prussia, the German Empire, etc., really have nothing to do with modern Germany, because Germany is not a kingdom or empire, it's a country that was founded in 1945/6 by Allied occupiers. The only messy thing about it is the reunification in the early 1990s, because two formerly separate countries (DDR and BRD), with extremely different systems of government, were stuck together, but under the same system of government as the western side, which really makes it an annexation.
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 Israel, you can figure out how to deal with cameras.
Is it more democratic to let the majority be oppressed by a tiny property holding parasitic class or is it more democratic to repress them and express the interests of the majority?
Bear in mind when you answer that scientific surveys show American "democracy" is an oligarchy with popular opinion being almost entirely disconnected from policy.
I wouldn’t argue that China is a representation of the latter, the CCP fails to represent the interests of the majority. Furthermore, I think the ideology of herding and repressing the confused masses is a despicable and blatantly invalid one, which is why I despise its use in America.
Yes, the US is an oligarchy of rich people with enormous influence over our sham system. That’s why I don’t want the system pointing cameras at me; I know the person behind the screen doesn’t represent my interests.
It's sometimes hard to credit that there are people who think in such a contorted way as you apparently do.
China isn't a democracy. The word doesn't apply when your choices for candidates can only come from one political party that pre-approved them. Don't be absurd.
It's a one-party state in which variations of style among different senior figures are still forced together under the rubric of a general monolithic dogma that's only marginally beholden to public opinion, and very much subject to the whims of dominant figures. Also, many elements of the Chinese state are at least as conservative as the worst you could see in the U.S, just without the religious overtones. Truly, go study the subject and it's history a bit better.
What's happening in Palestine, or more specifically in the Gaza Strip, is not a genocide. It's a tragedy of destructive military strategies by Israel, but calling it a genocide is demeaning to the definition of real genocides, which you should also study a bit better.
>the most technologically sophisticated, surveilled, and completely enclosed death camp ever constructed by the U.S. and Israel
Death camp, really? Also, if you're disgusted by technologically sophisticated, heavily surveilled, enclosed camps, then you really might want to find out what the Chinese "democracy" is doing in the Xinjiang Uyghur Region...
Your point is a good one actually, and it's why I didn't mention anything about genocide in Xinjiang. It's a grotesque political atrocity of social repression and culture eradication, but as far as any sources I've looked at go, the Chinese state isn't literally killing the Uyghers en masse as an ethnic or religious group.
Nonetheless, the deaths of civilians in the Gaza Strip also aren't a genocide. They could be defined as a war crime, or if you want to be really generous to Israel, as unfair collateral damage (a phrase I mostly detest in this context) but the Israeli state isn't deliberately targeting the Strip's ethnic Palestinian population for eradication.
The Israeli state isn't deliberately targeting the Strip's ethnic Palestinian population for eradication.
Total eradication, no.
It just wants to see it the resident population vastly reduced. And what it is deliberately doing is creating conditions favorable to this outcome, which it refers to as "voluntary transfer":
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.
People from (all?) visa waiver countries have their fingerprints taken when entering the US, in addition to having to submit an ESTA[0] application before arrival. Last I checked, it still asked for all your social media handles (although you're not required to provide them).
I've seen it while returning from a trip to Taiwan recently, via JFK. They took fingerprints from non-US passport holders at Customs, I think; they didn't take mine.
Yeah all non-citizens have to do that. If and when you become a citizen you won’t have to. It’s crazy how much nicer entering the country feels after that lol
I was in China a few years ago, didn't take fingerprints, iris, or face recognition. Just a routine passport check and that's it. I flew from Europe to Beijing, might be different if you fly from the US.
I was travelling by train from Mongolia/crossed the border by bus because it was cheaper, and when I mean by bus, the bus collects you at the station before the border and drives you to the big border checkpoint building where you cross the border by foot/where they have booths and guards that do the passport and visa checks, just like at an airport.
Maybe I'm misremembering the iris scan. If it did happen, it could be because there were loads of Mongolian students about to embark on their next semester of studies in China.
Wouldn’t it just be easier if they forced you to provide your TikTok account. They’d know everything they’d need to know about you. We’re so sure that CCP has access to that data anyways right? That’s the point of the forced sell legislation.
Travel by plane/DMV applications normalized fingerprinting.
What’s next? Semen and blood samples as well?
The terrorists have won. Fear has ruled the major powers of the world. And the current major power of the free world is a puppet and an all around idiot.
I was shocked to see this program arrive in my local airport. I opt out every time, but the horrifying thing is that almost everyone simply complies with whatever is asked of them. The TSA agents use phrasing that make it seem like you are supposed to go through the facial recognition process and don’t have a choice. Yes, there are tiny signs scattered around that say you can opt out. But when the officer says “step in front of the camera”, most people comply with what seems like orders from a legal authority.
TSA will punish you for opting out of anything. If you're lucky, the least they will do is hold you up a long time so you have a good chance of missing your flight. I've also had them sexually harass me, and confiscate (e.g. steal) legal items in retaliation for opting out of things I had the legal right to opt out of. They know people are in a hurry and won't do anything about being treated unethically or illegally, because calling them out would require missing your flight.
When I opted out of the scanner once, I had to wait about 20 minutes, and then the TSA agent comes over to do a "pat down" instead, but is going inappropriately slow and squeezing my body, and saying things like "I'd bet you opted out because you like this." I regret not immediately calling them out and filing charges.
I always opt out of the scanner (even have a special shirt [1]), and without fail they always stand me by the intake (radio-leaky-end) of the baggage x-ray machine for 5+ minutes.
To be fair, I think most of the TSA agents are not, many are just doing their job and trying to bring some dignity to a tense situation. I travel a lot and have met some very kind TSA agents.
But as an organization, they clearly have a culture that allows or even encourages people to openly abuse and harass travelers, and punish people for exercising their rights. When I was being sexually harassed by a TSA agent, the other agents standing nearby allowed it to happen and said nothing.
I had a phase where I would always wear this "cease your investigators" shirt, never had any comments but yea stood by the machine for 5 minutes or so, never considered the machine would be radiating outward as well as inward, but yeah, mostly did it as a small protest, thought it worth demonstrating you don't have to comply.
I would be curious to know which airport(s) you receive this treatment from? I fly regularly between a handful of major US hubs. There is only one airport that I would be vocal about their treatment of passengers to a group of local TSA that I played co-ed sports with. The most senior one's response was that it wasn't surprising as that location (entire airport management) has had a toxic culture from the top down and they were trying to clean it up but it's still a bureaucracy. Anywhere else and I have an agent that would be having an off or bad day, but nothing like what you are describing at any of the others.
When I pull the pre-check random scanner check, I opt out and will go straight into small talk with the agent, they don't like it any more than you do, (maybe one or two might) but the majority they want it over with as quickly as you do. My personal tactic is to go into my story of being sexually molested at a checkpoint at an airport in Spain. It was very unexpected and extremely uncomfortable, including the smile after as though waiting for me to drop my number. I can joke about it now, and it gives TSA agents an opening to assure me that is not their intent without being weird about it. They're also annoyed that people who do things like that give them all a bad rep
The last I was in San Francisco International the TSA staff came barreling out of their door and the first agent out yelled into the terminal, "MAN! I really hope someone opts out today! I can't wait to give that guy a serious patdown."
I once had the unusual luck of being patted down by a young attractive trainee woman in sweden. They also made her to re-do it because she hadn't done it properly apparently (she had actually touched waaaaaay more than usual).
Other than a nearly identical uniform that says CAS in place of TSA there is no apparent difference. Which is why I probably didn't even realize. In any case my return leg was delayed so I rented a car to drive back and have never returned to commercial flights since.
My 2c: I use precheck, and fly regularly between RDU and PBI. Opting out of the 3d face camera has always been easy, and I never had pushback from them. PBI has well placed opt-out signs, but I hadn't see them at RDU.
I expect that one day it won't be optional, but I'll avoid it while I can
The most recent time, which was years ago now, when I was leaving the country (I'm not a US citizen, and had finished working on a H1-B).
In the EU, there's delay - they have to get someone, you go to a room, pat-down. Unremarkable.
In the US, delay, they get someone - but the "pat-down" was so forceful I had trouble keeping my balance. It seemed to me to be deliberately excessive.
Fortunately, I do not live in, and do not need to travel to, the USA.
Apple showed how this can be done without compromise.
A combination of on-device-only FaceID and app-by-app opt-in to even trigger a validation, with on-device federal ID validation of some kind, putting you in control of presenting a cryptographically signed ID, would, in fact, be ideal for both convenience and privacy.
IF you're going to require ID, that would be a fine way.
The REAL issue is whether ID should be allowed to be required at all to move around, or if you have the right to anonymously assemble (and travel for assembly) within your own national boundary. That's the goalpost to debate.
> Apple showed how this can be done without compromise.
Sure, but also no.
I am outright stating that facial recognition did not need to become so normalized, and everyone getting used to it for the device in their pocket did no good in this regard.
> IF you're going to require ID, that would be a fine way.
Or we could just, y'know, do it the way we've been doing it for decades now.
This isn't a casual mistaken. Taking from the newly implemented border exit control that we've gotten. (If you think we don't have one, re-read that) :
The GAO found that the ability for people to understand that Americans are not required to go through the biometric exit was non-existant and the experience of opting out was very poor.
What this means is signage was not posted that indicating for Americans this is an optional process and people forming the "requirement" were not educated that it is optional for citizens.
Yet, the experience is that people forcefully push people into to posing for the camera with markings on the floor, the lack of opting in/consenting to it, and prevent people from being aware of what's going on. (Yes: You can opt out .. walk up to the board area with your passport open to your photo page)
Generally speaking you present ID to pass through security.
The facial recognition is based on the biometric data collected when you got your ID, the ID you presented to pass through security. The ID with your name, address, date of birth, and uniquely identifying number on it. The ID which is associated with your boarding pass. The ID they scan (or they scan the boarding pass which is associated with your ID) prior to letting you through security.
Using facial recognition changes nothing, absolutely nothing, except that it reduces the amount of time spent at the checkpoint.
It does not grant anyone access to any information they do not already have.
It does not impede the traveler in any way.
It does not change, at all, any aspect of one's privacy whatsoever.
"But I don't wanna..." doesn't seem like a defensible position.
> the biometric data collected when you got your ID
When I got my license, which I can use to board a flight in my country I did not give fingerprints or an eye scan. They have my photo, DOB, name - not more.
Maybe I’m old school but I despise the idea of the government tracking me as I travel. Time and time again they are caught violating privacy laws and abusing power.
Given that you already need government issued ID that matches the name printed on your ticket to travel on an airplane, wouldn’t the government already have the ability to track you, regardless of facial recognition?
Indeed, the government doesn't even need the ID, they ingest a data feed of Passenger Name Records (PNRs) from all airlines. This is why when TSA performs the automated identity proofing, comparing a photo of you to your ID, they don't require that you provide a boarding pass.
Comparing an ephemeral photo taken of you to your government credential at the TSA checkpoint is a temporary formality. At some point, the government credential presentation will be unnecessary.
The point of this program isn't that it makes things substantially quicker at the checkpoint – it is a minor speed-up at best. The goal is to normalize the collection of biometric data, to shift the Overton window of surveillance.
The collection of biometric data is already normalized.
It has been normalized since the 1920s, when the FBI's central fingerprint repository was created.
And the end goal isn't the system that currently exists. It is a system in which the movement of passengers isn't halted. Someone watched 1990's Total Recall and said "we need a security checkpoint like that".
Also, the "Overton window" is a libertarian bullshit response to the natural shifts that occur in society, usually trotted out whenever libertarians get pissed off that "muh freedom" no longer excuses their bigotry and they can't make "because their knee-grows" jokes anymore.
>The collection of biometric data is already normalized.
So by your logic we should just fully accept its further normalization with absolutely no pushback or regard for any notion of private life and activity?
>It has been normalized since the 1920s, when the FBI's central fingerprint repository was created.
This is a blatant bullshit comparison that you can't possibly be ignorant enough to compare to modern real-time data collection accessible to many levels of government for tracking you and your personal details down to a deeply minute level almost as you live them. The U.S government of the 1920s and for decades after had its repositories and files on people, but in any given moment they were unlikely to have any clue what you were doing or where you were and lacked the means to easily know these things unless they were specifically targeting you for a particular reason.
That by the way is as it should be, a world in which a powerful state that could easily at some point turn actively hostile in some unfair way can't also passively monitor anyone and everyone as it pleases. A world in which the state, if it wants to monitor someone heavily, needs to make an effort to do it, and through means that can only be sanctioned by specific legal procedures, for specific activities, based on specific legal motives.
No, the Overton window is not "libertarian bullshit" about natural shifts in society. There's no natural law that makes total surveillance axiomatic to a society, and normalizations of dangerously abnormal permissiveness are very real in many social contexts.
>usually trotted out whenever libertarians get pissed off that "muh freedom" no longer excuses their bigotry
What the fuck are you even talking about at all here? What's bigoted about wanting personal freedom or defensible privacy? So because some random hypothetical racist libertarian likes to make off-color jokes, defending privacy is only something done by racist bigots?
>So by your logic we should just fully accept its further normalization with absolutely no pushback or regard for any notion of private life and activity?
Yes.
That, instead of "people who think that this is an erosion of privacy are wrong" is exactly my logic.
Face scanners at airports change exactly and precisely, with no room for qualifications, unequivocally, irrefutably, nothing.
Sorry I hurt your libertarian feelings. Some more YouTube videos on stoicism may help. They won't, but keep thinking they will.
I was with you until "doesn't grant them info that they don't already have." It gives them the opportunity to update their face model of you in a confirmed and consistent manner.
It also doesn't improve anything:
An agent comparison of you vs the id is still considered to be the gold standard. When this system fails, you have to default to the agent's comparison. This is a slow down compared to the previous scenario.
The time for an id comparison isn't the bottleneck in security. It's the physical actions used to go through the TSA and the built in inconsistency to prevent people from speedrunning the screening.
What do you think opting out does exactly? For the system to work they must already have your photo associated with your name and ID. And even if you opt out they’re still tracking your movement. It seems like an impotent protest so I don’t bother.
They make it opt out so they don't need to demonstrate the cost/benefits of making it required.
They make it opt out because there are always a few people who object[1], so this is a safety valve.
If everyone opted out ("I am Spartacus") then it would stop and they would have to switch to less efficient means. (If it weren't less efficient then they wouldn't need this one.)
"If you politely decline to show ID whenever someone asks (or demands) it, and continue politely declining regardless of how they escalate, you will discover what your rights are. You'll be surprised. You'll get away with it. Most of the people who were asking for it have no right to demand it. They've been relying on your voluntary cooperation. They forgot to tell you that part; but you just found it out for yourself. Sometimes you may discover that you didn't have the right to live, move around, or do business in your own country without government-issued documents. That's very interesting knowledge to acquire first-hand too. If you haven't recently tried exercising your right to exist and live without government permission, are you sure you still have that right?"
[1] In one of the author Robert Heinlein's biographical accounts he walks out of a hotel because they demand to see id at registration. He went to another hotel which did not.
Unless you are a Canadian born in an undesirable country: Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, .. etc. It doesn't matter if you are citizen and have a passport, you will always be racially profiled when crossing the US unfortunately and I bet the experience will be much worse under the new Administration.
Every state id picture is run through facial recognition, and that data is processed to detect duplicate people and other issues. Every passport has a picture which is digitized for facial recognition.
This is a good thing, as it potentially disarms the stupid RealID fiasco with respect to ID and airports.
There is no privacy benefit to document validation.
People just want to get through an incredibly annoying experience as fast as possible, and they know the people behind them want this too. Doesn’t excuse the bullshit, but it’s much less of a dramatic “sheep bowing to authority” than made out to be here.
This is it. I don't think I've opted out of it. I know I can but I know the agent is going to make a big deal of it and the line is already long for everyone behind me so whatever lets just get through it.
Nah. In my experience when you opt out, they say “Okay,” scan your ID the same way they’ve been doing for 20 years, and you get through in the same time.
If they want to entice us with convenience, the facial recognition should allow you to just stroll through without talking to anyone.
For this to work they must have already done facial recognition on everyone’s ID photos, so I fail to see what opting out even does for me from a privacy perspective. Seems like shutting the barn door after the horse is already out.
Indeed, not to mention the availability of public social media photos. To think that every intelligence agency on earth hasn’t already trained FR across their databases of IDs and material voluntarily uploaded by themselves and their family/friends…
One reason I left Facebook early on was that I didn’t like getting tagged in photos the next morning after everyone would get home from parties. Too bad for me, as long as you have a friend who don’t value your privacy, there is nothing you can do about it.
Add to this any public event, where they are well within their rights to take your picture and match it against known threat actors and the only way to not play this game is to be a hermit
> One reason I left Facebook early on was that I didn’t like getting tagged in photos the next morning after everyone would get home from parties. Too bad for me, as long as you have a friend who don’t value your privacy, there is nothing you can do about it.
I hated this too, but there was an option to disable it. I know because I used it for that very reason. I don't know if they removed it; I left Facebook probably around a decade ago and it was there when I left.
I don’t see opting out as an effective method to counter over reach in this case, sounds like it just makes life slightly less convenient for the TSA staff and the rare people that choose to opt out. Is the idea that a critical mass of people opt out and that slows down security enough that this pilot program is viewed as a failure?
The other form of fighting back against this, pushing lawmakers, seems far more effective
> The other form of fighting back against this, pushing lawmakers, seems far more effective
It's not an "OR" problem. You can do both.
> just makes life slightly less convenient for the TSA staff
The point is to inconvenience them. I'm willing to bet you are exaggerating even to yourself how minimal this is. Besides, little things add up. It's why you're exhausted with this in the first place. It is how we got here. The accumulation of little things.
You’re right about that, and I salute your principled stance, but the last thing I want to deal with is making a protest at the checkpoint before I can get to the lounge.
These people are standing between me and a free glass of mid wine and the most comfortable place I’m going to be for the next <y> hours. They also have basically unlimited power to make my day worse, delaying me, searching me, doing all kinds of real violations of my rights.
Frankly, the quicker robots take their jobs the better, I hope this speeds it up.
> the last thing I want to deal with is making a protest at the checkpoint before I can get to the lounge.
Remember from the article
>> TSA Administrator David Pekoske in 2023 in which he said “we will get to the point where we require biometrics across the board.”
An important thing to remember is that power is exponentially more difficult to roll back than it is to give out. The danger is that power creeps and you have a hard time undoing the gains it made. Quite the common human problem of solving issues before they become issues. Perhaps because the reward is ambiguous and so doesn't "feel" as fruitful to most. But every preventable tragedy is doubly tragic.
> They also have basically unlimited power to make my day worse, delaying me, searching me, doing all kinds of real violations of my rights.
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller
I understand, but want to stress this. If I've learned anything in life, it is that it takes work to live a simple life. It is worth the work though, because it is less work. But it requires foresight. We humans are bad at that, but the capacity to plan is one of the things that sets us apart (other animals can plan, but not to the same level of sophistication). Be aware that it is always far cheaper to perform maintenance on something than it is to replace or fix something that is broken. This abstracts out to much of life. I get it, we're all tired in the airport, but by pushing the task off to another day, the debt compounds. Sure, you don't have to deal with it now, but the cost still exists, and accrues. You have to balance the equation for yourself, but we must be clear that there is a consequence to all actions, including inaction. Is your time now worth more than your time in the future? Maybe. You have to decide, but I hope you consider future you's opinion as well.
I must also remind you that the reason they have this power, the reason we have this security theater, the reason we have a "safety system" that kills more people than it saves[0], is because we've passed the buck. The reason we're at this state of exhaustion _RIGHT NOW_ is because of our accumulated debt.
So at the minimum, if you're too tired to protest, at least don't try to stop those who are trying to make your life better. Those who are trying to reduce the problem you are frustrated by. If you cannot make the effort, fine I won't judge, but if you convince someone else to choose apathy, then I will. Because frankly, it means you have made __MY__ life harder. Because you have sided with those you are complaining about.
> Frankly, the quicker robots take their jobs the better, I hope this speeds it up.
I think this is very narrow minded. It is forgetting the past. There wasn't a problem before. Is there good justification as to why we cannot return? Because as I see it, robots replacing TSA is the epitome of what I mentioned before: power being exponentially harder to remove compared to handing it out. Sometimes it is best to replace a squeaky wheel, but sometimes you need to ask if it is even necessary in the first place. In this case, I think not. So no, I don't want robots TSA agents, because frankly, it isn't the humans than are the problem, it is the system.
We're humans. We're __capable__ of thinking through complex things. I hope we do not squander this gift we have.
I'm not trying to advocate for apathy, I am happy there are people (like you) that are willing to have this fight, willing to sacrifice their time and risk being punished by the state for this.
No worries. We all make mistakes and we all need pushback. While we disagree on what actions we should take, I still appreciate that you've expressed yours. I want to make sure that no one ever prevents you from doing so.
I wonder how widely this is shared. I was shocked getting in to a Singaporean Airlines flight, and I didn’t even have to present my boarding pass. Just scanned my face at the gate and told me where I was sitting. (This wasn’t even terminal security)
Sure, but I'm not going to help them by volunteering additional visual data. It's also political. I'm not participating.
And then letter is correct. I had a guy retaliate for declining. He said I was making his job harder and that he'd make my life harder in return. I'm still waiting. Surely, as a TSA employee, he's got lots of connections in government. A lot of these people are unstable.
I've declined several times now, and have gotten harassed about it about 3/4 times. Whoever designed the program really did a good job getting buy-in from the lower-level employees.
The current program in limited beta test is called "TSA PreCheck Touchless".
So you need to be in TSA PreCheck, and you gave them your photo and fingerprints when you voluntarily enrolled in that program. They are probably using your passport biometrics if those are available as well.
Lots of comments come up here every time TSA facial recognition makes the front page asking what the difference is between this and the human looking at your ID.
The answer is what happens when you don't match. I have long hair and a beard in my driver's license photo. I don't now. The license I had before I was able to renew without ever having to go in person for 15 years because of holes in California's laws about renewing driver's licenses remotely for anyone who has ever served on active duty military out of state. I have very rarely had a driver's license photo that actually looked like me, and TSA agents have commented on it pretty frequently, saying I don't look like the person on the ID I'm presenting. They let me through anyway, because what else are they supposed to do? Identification cards are in and of themselves somewhat of an element of security theater in that sense. The data are frozen in time whereas reality may constantly change.
The only reason this was ever the case was the fact that your identification photo was not regularly updated to match your current face. If the TSA is constantly taking more photos of you, then potentially it can be. The obvious next phase in a program like this is to store the photos and build a current and updateable model of what every person in the US looks like, eventually not needing the ID cards at all.
Yet again we accept the premise that we need 'more' security so it is OK to do these types of things. This implies without evidence that there is a problem and then jumps right to the, again, unfounded conclusion that this type of thing will solve that hypothetical issue. The discussion shouldn't be about how to do this 'responsibly', implicitly admitting that there is some sort of need, and instead it should be about how to dismantle things like this completely and how to stop new things like this from ever happening again.
What I find funny about their sign that says “your photo will be deleted”, it fails to specify how many memcpy’s of the bits making up the photo have been made and if they made any detours along to the way to various other software systems that may save those bits across various disks.
Does “your photo will be deleted” mean ALL bits making up the photo across any systems are wiped from all records? I doubt it. I also doubt if a database lookup is done on premise on closed networked systems with no possible ways to connect to the outside world.
So a bipartisan group of Senators can write a letter to the TSA speaking out against a policy but not get themselves to bring it to the floor and vote against it? Which is, you know, their actual job?
Hard to think of their intentions as anything more than theater for their voter base.
Making it a requirement sounds like some project manager has a KPI to hit to justify the expense of the hardware rollout. Maybe a stretch since I doubt most people opted out anyway.
Either that or they took a page out of the big tech playbook where the plan was to boil the frog all along.
And the senators’ letter quotes a talk given by TSA Administrator David Pekoske in 2023 in which he said “we will get to the point where we require biometrics across the board.”
As opposed to hoping the TSA agent doesn't properly proof you to your government credential you hand them? The data is already there, in state motor vehicle databases, and various federal databases. If you have Global Entry or PreCheck, your biometrics are already on file. The Dept of State has your photo associated with your passport, as does the DoD Common Access Card system.
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.
Some flight agents kinda force it on passengers, specially JetBlue ones. They say it is ‘mandatory’, but in reality they do not know or ignore their own protocols.
Senators should not be complaining about this. Congress required the TSA to check identity, and soon, REAL ID will be required to fly in the US, even domestically. So what's their problem with doing it effectively?
I’ll believe it when I see it. Something like six “final deadlines” have passed for this to happen, and every time it’s kicked years down the road. It’s an unfounded mandate with real end-user costs (in my state an REAL ID costs twice as much to obtain) that no longer seems to have a base of support in Congress.
There is only one sort of person who signs up to check internal passports and search innocent people, and I don’t care what color shirt they’re wearing these days.
It will happen if enough voters make it clear to their elected representatives that they want them to repeal the laws passed after 9/11 that mandate the security screening that TSA does. I agree that's highly unlikely, but it was voters who clamored for those laws in the first place after 9/11, so it's voters that need to push for getting them repealed.
Unless you are implying having no security at airports whatsoever (which will never happen), abolishing TSA simply means replacing one central agency with hundreds/thousands of private security agencies and companies in every state and city, which will only increase costs.
> Contractors provide a more flexible workforce for his airport, and on top of that, it’s easier to show people the door, he said.
> “If employees are not performing, they can be dealt with appropriately, better or more effectively on a contract side than a government side,” Sprenger said.
> Labor unions say the real reason airports want to go with contractors is simple: to cut costs. James Mudrock is the president of AFGE Local 1230, the union representing TSA workers in Sacramento, California.
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 databases full of people's names associated with their movements.
I think this is silly given how much Germany is actively helping a country where the PM of that country has an arrest warrant out for him through the ICC.
Germany is still facilitating an alleged genocide. The only thing that has changed is the profile of the victims. The situation now is even worse, given that practically everyone in the world knows what’s happening but life is going on as normal.
You could have made a sensible argument about how security policies in Israel move in a wrong direction, even if it isn't at all on topic. But you stumbled here too.
It is not against the law to publish photographs of someone without their consent. People post me to Instagram without my consent in Berlin all of the time.
I appreciate the response, but it seems that database can be constructed with or without facial recognition because photo ID is already required. So, I ask again, why is this bad?
Showing ID to pass a gate is somewhat different than having a timestamped record of the fact that you passed a gate, but I agree that given it's already surveilled it's not a big difference. Still, small differences add up.
I mean, it was living memory for many HN'ers that you could travel freely in the United States with doing either. It's a post-9/11 thing that an airline ticket is associated with a unique person, and requires a matching photo ID.
There was a time when America's security forces did not routinely surveil its own peoples' movements.
When I was a kid there were classified ads like "Pan Am NYC Dec 20-28, E. Smith, $200 o.b.o" for people who wanted to resell their ticket because they couldn't make the trip. There were no id checks then.
In the 1990s the airplanes jumped at the opportunity to have required id checks so they could take control of the secondary market.
It was still possible to buy a ticket like "E. Smith", but that option was cut off a few years later.
(American here) A quick search shows Pew Research, National Academies Press (associated with the Library Of Congress), AmericaUnderWatch dot com, Politico and Georgetown Law .. all with varying responses to this question. In the case of social structure and law, there are many layers, interwoven, and difficult or impossible to fit into chat-level responses.
I also can't see the tracking difference between a human verifying your identity and entering that into a database and a computer verifying your identity and entering that into a database.
But it's still a valid concern as to whether or not this new system is at least as secure and privacy-respecting as the old one.
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.
No faster than having a human hold up your id and compare it, plus now you don’t have yet another digital copy of your face floating around for the police state.
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.
I don't disagree, but installing face scanners at the same location humans do face scanning and using them the same as they used the humans is not the same as mass surveillance.
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.
I mean it's like saying what's the point of a security feature if thing that feature prevents from happening isn't happening after implementing that feature.
Sure, there's some truth to that, but shoe bombs, underpants bombs and the two liquids bombs have never been tried again. If they did, they would set off their shoes and underpants in the "cattle maze", where there are several planesfull of people, and nobody has been ID'ed, or x-rayed or swabbed.
There's nothing magical about setting off a bomb on a plane as far as terrorizing a populace goes. Bombs in the mazes before "security" would be effective, as we learned at the Boston Marathon.
So I’ve heard this a lot, but how can we actually test this? The only realistic test I can imagine here is that the TSA shuts down for a decade and we see what happens?
A small comment that will probably go mostly unnoticed, but this question has always bothered me too and it's a second opportunity inside of an hour to talk about working at Disneyland post 9/11. We instituted bag checks at the intake turnstiles for the first time after that, and the result was enormous lines that backed up all the way to the streets. It left me wondering why nobody just detonated a bomb or fired the entire magazine of an Uzi into the crowd waiting to get into the park. You could still kill anywhere from hundreds to thousands of people, it's still at Disneyland. What were we really accomplishing by making it less likely to happen in the park, but possibly making it even easier to happen right outside, given the gridlock, how tightly everyone was packed, and the impossibility of hiding anywhere or running away?
Because other forms of mass travel such as trains and buses, which barely have any security checks, rarely get blown up by bombs smuggled on to them, or hijacked by guns smuggled onto them.
That's because you can't really drive trains into buildings, and while you could technically do it with a bus, it's not that feasible nor that damaging. Flying a huge intercontinental airliner fully loaded with fuel into a building is quite different.
There's very good practical reasons the terrorists chose airplanes and not trains or buses.
Also passengers will fight back now. Before 911, the advice was, stay calm and do what the hijackers tell you to do. And things would work out for the most part.
Some of those were at train stations, not in trains. The same type of terrorism would work any place you find dozens or hundreds of people in close proximity. The whole reason the terrorists in all these incidents targeted trains or train stations is because a somewhat-large number of people were gathered there.
If you want to destroy skyscrapers (and maybe kill thousands or tens of thousands in the process), and not just murder a few dozen people, train-related terrorism isn't going to work for you.
They test the TSA with weapons and most get through. This means people don't wish to use weapons to hijack planes, or it would happen way more often and it doesn't.
It doesn't happen now, after 9/11. 9/11 was a one-time thing, and basically ruined airliner hijacking forever for other would-be hijackers. Before 9/11, people were taught to comply with hijackers because it was just a political stunt and people generally didn't get hurt. After 9/11, passengers will now fight for their lives because they'll assume the hijackers are religious kooks who intend to murder them all by flying them into a building. A few hijackers with razor blades today will be torn limb from limb by the other passengers.
“For any amount convenience, it’s okay to discriminate against people based on any collection of facts, including ones you can see on their face like their heritage, so long as none of those facts are mine.”
I don't like TSA or the US security state, but I really find it hard to see why this has attracted so much attention. When you enter the airport, you're surrounded by cameras from numerous government and commercial entities, no doubt performing facial recognition. When you get to your destination, your photo will be taken by the destination country plus countless other surveillance cameras along the way. And unless you like long lines, you've already submitted fingerprints and yet another photo to TSA or CBP for precheck. Even if you didn't, all REAL IDs (except a foreign passport) require digital storage of the ID photo--that's what they are matching your face to at the checkpoint.
(During the pandemic, I had a job that let me--I mean, a friend of my choice--do my own e-verify/I-9 form. When you enter your passport number, the e-Verify system spits out a digital copy of the photo you sent it to prevent counterfeit or altered photos.)
I just don't understand how one more potato quality still capture of your face, that by definition is very similar to those they already have, changes the equation much.
You've precisely described the reason I will not fly commercial anymore. All of this surveillance has a chilling effect. On citizens, on business, on international trade.
Flying privately requires none of this. Which is how you know they're not serious about security but about control of the masses.
Also, the thing you're ignoring, and perhaps why you fail to understand the problem, is you haven't bothered to ask what the false positive rate is. Would you enjoy being stopped and arrested by very cocksure police simply because a computer made a mistake and they refuse to believe that?
> Flying privately requires none of this. Which is how you know they're not serious about security but about control of the masses.
In Germany, there is no way you'll get on a commercial airfield without going through security, and if you're not a passenger but an employee or a pilot, you'll need a comprehensive background check.
Only exemption for now is ultralight aircraft because these are about as dangerous as a car (or if you just compare kinetic energy, even less dangerous because they're barely half a ton in weight.
Your "commercial airfield" may actually be two airfields in one. This is not uncommon. There is a "commercial" side which is where public carriers usually work and there is a "private" side which is where individuals and often cargo works.
Aside from this there are plenty of private airfields in Germany.
> ultralight aircraft because these are about as dangerous as a car
The cool things about vehicles is you can put things in them. Things like explosives. The incredibly low tech version of this is currently in use in some parts of the world, and that is where you attach a mortar to a drone, then go drop it on a target.
Because they are using more than just a 2d photo, these things are taking almost microscopic details in. I just pay the devil and ask for the personal treatment and skip these things. These are not potato quality and the government isn’t as backward at tech as you think. Remember when you’re dealing with cops there is nothing you can say or do that will be to your advantage in court , the same goes in real life. Skip all of these types of security theater as it’s possible. While I did not want to see the new regime change in Washington because of the high chance of economic and challenges to democracy, one of the things they might cut back on is stuff like this; a Harris admin certainly was not going to be.
At all the airports I have been through using this system, the device in use appeared to be a Logitech webcam. I doubt the resolution is higher than 1080p.
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?
You're working for a client who wants some changes, and more changes, and more changes, and is difficult to work with. At some point you may have to fire the client. As a simile, this is like a rubber band being stretched to the breaking point.
Or, the new boss is a very bad manager. Some people quit to move to another job. Each one is a rope snapping. If enough ropes snap - if enough people quit and are not replaced fast enough - then that department can no longer function.
To clarify further, "rubber band to break" is because a rubber band can be stretched and stretched, but not without limit. Once it has reached its limit, it breaks with a snap, and cannot easily be fixed.
For the metaphor "one of the ropes to snap", think of a cargo net carrying a heavy load. Each rope has a different tensile strength, and the load is not perfectly balanced. It's possible for a heavy load to break one rope, but the net still hold because the load shifts onto the other ropes, which have reserve strength. However, this should be a warning, because as more ropes break the less reserve there is, until the net is no longer able to hold the cargo.
I don't know what you mean by "eventually will go wrong" in this context where several senators say that things have already gone 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.
I don't fly anymore if I don't have to because of this security theatre, so the one thing it has a positive effect on is perhaps ecological. Otherwise it is completely hysterical, a remnant of some US lawmakers that wanted to look though at some point. It has grown and grown and just is a caricature of sensible security policies.
That autocratic states readily pick up on it should give you pause, but instead of questioning the efficiency of a security apparatus, it is excused because the status quo is already shitty.
God I hate this argument and this blunt misunderstanding of computer vision. (I've dealt with it so many times on reddit) Frequently I'm met with these arguments with some imaginative justification for this technology. At this point it's hard to be convinced that the arguements aren't an AstroTurf by security vendors. (Yes dang, I realize this is bad to make this accusation to say but I'm speaking generically and over a large group of people)
Additionally you threw in a false equivalency: But a ton of things are going on..you're useless in fighting it. On top of that you threw in an accusation that "if you don't then face longer lines".
The cameras that are above aren't good enough to do a confident identification of an individual. They're great for tracking where unique blobs go.
The picture they are doing a comparison against is a profile picture and consistent lighting. Additionally the old picture that is on your license is a much older photo. The thread here is that the people who are taking your image now are updating their models and maintaining the models of what you look like. With that they are able to retroactively and perform future lookups on different visual datasources about what you did. (Gas stations, stores, weed shop, adult toy store, walking down the red light district, being on a train, etc)
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.".
Pictures are also taken on entry in Canada, at least at Vancouver airport [1]. And obviously getting the visa requires submitting your fingerprints.
[1] https://www.yvr.ca/en/passengers/navigate-yvr/customs-and-im...
It's Canada wide, we have these in Montreal as well
Facial recognition systems like this are used everywhere in china. Its common for gates in apartment buildings.
Its just how things work there. It feel more malicious to pretend its not happening
There's a famous saying about Mussolini making the trains run on time. The joke was that anyone who complained about the trains running late, which was an endemic issue emblematic of the financial failures of fascism (his government system), was killed.
But if you didn't complain about the trains, maybe because you didn't take them, you didn't get killed. It was fine.
Maybe things are actually kinda bad, but you're just not willing to admit it to yourself because you aren't complaining about the trains.
In the US, we complain about the trains. And if the gov't is spying on us with facial recognition, we're going to stop them.
> And if the gov't is spying on us with facial recognition, we're going to stop them.
I wish I still had this childish optimism.
No, in the US we just stick fingers in our ears while we let the private sector do it while screaming “la-la-la” and closing our eyes.
The problem is that by this it becomes ever more difficult to get rid of an oppressive, dictatorial, unelected and violent Government.
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 singular truth: all men die. All things change. Obviously this policy can go too far, but personally I think it is worth considering not just how good a policy or power can be, but how much harm it can do if abused or misused. It is easy to ignore this part because we want to believe people are good and have good intentions. Because we see the advantages and get excited about them. Because it is harder to think about abstract scenarios. But it is an important thing to think. You need not think your government is evil or nefarious to still be concerned with turnkey tyranny. In fact, the more faith you have in your government, the more you should be concerned. Because it is at that time that people are less likely to keep their guards up, and it is that same time that hostile actors look to take over. There is no absolute defense against malicious leaders, so it takes constant care.
I am pretty sure this is the loophole Gödel found with the American constitution. It is pretty easy to turn the US government authoritarian, if you elect an authoritarian president.
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=Ggz_gd--UO0
That's the intent, but evidently, (and sadly,) it doesn't work how it should. There's too much influence from moneyed interests and just too much bad faith participation and gaming of the various processes. It was bad when I was born and it's gotten ever more corrupt and dysfunctional since.
I think that the biggest issue is that congress is underfunded and has ceded too much control to the executive.
By that I mean that the modern world is incredibly complex, yet in the house, each house member only gets 1.25 million per year for staff. Yet despite that they are supposed to create and manage the rules and regulations for a 30 trillion dollar economy.
It's impossible, even if you have good faith of all actors. This leads to lobbying groups providing texts for laws, because they have the resources to provide people to write and review them.
It also leads to shifting the bureaucracy of the regulations to the executive branch, because that is where there is the money to hire staff/expertise/ and regulate something as large and complicated.
My pet peeve is that each congressional rep should be receiving ~25 million for staff, then use that to build up in house expertise, vs having everything under the executive.
Congress has ceded too much power.
Doesn't Congress have all the access they want to the governmental services?
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)_/¯)
>it’s the oldest country in the world if you measure by (codified) constitution
I think a better way of phrasing it might be "a continuous system of government". Germany certainly existed before the late 1940s, but the system of government was obviously very, very different.
It's not that messy, it's just a disagreement about what a "country" is. You're thinking with the European mindset of "nation", where a country is defined by its borders, history, etc. The OP is thinking with the American mindset where the country is defined by its founding documents and legal principles. They're entirely different.
In the latter mindset, Prussia, the German Empire, etc., really have nothing to do with modern Germany, because Germany is not a kingdom or empire, it's a country that was founded in 1945/6 by Allied occupiers. The only messy thing about it is the reunification in the early 1990s, because two formerly separate countries (DDR and BRD), with extremely different systems of government, were stuck together, but under the same system of government as the western side, which really makes it an annexation.
> But the upside is that it’s the oldest country in the world if you measure by (codified) constitution.
Iceland would very much like a word about this. But your point in fair, maybe phrased a bit wrong.
The official document also says 1944[0]
So I'm going to need that citation because I'm having a hard time verifying what you're saying.[0] https://www.government.is/library/01-Ministries/Prime-Minist...
he is speaking of our [Alþingi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Althing) which has existed since 930.
> "Turnkey Tyranny"
Thanks this is a really great concept. I'm going to use this for the slippery slope fallacy fallacy.
For an insider's perspective about "The Social Credit System", and the biometrics which underpin it, you can watch https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9904-the_social_credit_system
It's a long, but interesting talk.
Also available on the media.ccc.de YouTube page:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7UKYUTke58
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 Israel, you can figure out how to deal with cameras.
Insinuation? It's a fact that China is not a democracy.
China is a one party state is it not?
> you can deal with cameras
Still rather not.
Is it more democratic to let the majority be oppressed by a tiny property holding parasitic class or is it more democratic to repress them and express the interests of the majority?
Bear in mind when you answer that scientific surveys show American "democracy" is an oligarchy with popular opinion being almost entirely disconnected from policy.
I wouldn’t argue that China is a representation of the latter, the CCP fails to represent the interests of the majority. Furthermore, I think the ideology of herding and repressing the confused masses is a despicable and blatantly invalid one, which is why I despise its use in America.
Yes, the US is an oligarchy of rich people with enormous influence over our sham system. That’s why I don’t want the system pointing cameras at me; I know the person behind the screen doesn’t represent my interests.
It's sometimes hard to credit that there are people who think in such a contorted way as you apparently do.
China isn't a democracy. The word doesn't apply when your choices for candidates can only come from one political party that pre-approved them. Don't be absurd.
It's a one-party state in which variations of style among different senior figures are still forced together under the rubric of a general monolithic dogma that's only marginally beholden to public opinion, and very much subject to the whims of dominant figures. Also, many elements of the Chinese state are at least as conservative as the worst you could see in the U.S, just without the religious overtones. Truly, go study the subject and it's history a bit better.
What's happening in Palestine, or more specifically in the Gaza Strip, is not a genocide. It's a tragedy of destructive military strategies by Israel, but calling it a genocide is demeaning to the definition of real genocides, which you should also study a bit better.
>the most technologically sophisticated, surveilled, and completely enclosed death camp ever constructed by the U.S. and Israel
Death camp, really? Also, if you're disgusted by technologically sophisticated, heavily surveilled, enclosed camps, then you really might want to find out what the Chinese "democracy" is doing in the Xinjiang Uyghur Region...
OP brings up a good point.
The news likes to allude to China's "genocide" in Xinjiang, but no one is dying.
At most they can stretch it to a "cultural genocide" but even that's not true as the native culture is not being repressed, only religious extremism.
However it is true that thousands of Palestinian civilians are being killed and those same media are afraid to call it out.
Your point is a good one actually, and it's why I didn't mention anything about genocide in Xinjiang. It's a grotesque political atrocity of social repression and culture eradication, but as far as any sources I've looked at go, the Chinese state isn't literally killing the Uyghers en masse as an ethnic or religious group.
Nonetheless, the deaths of civilians in the Gaza Strip also aren't a genocide. They could be defined as a war crime, or if you want to be really generous to Israel, as unfair collateral damage (a phrase I mostly detest in this context) but the Israeli state isn't deliberately targeting the Strip's ethnic Palestinian population for eradication.
The Israeli state isn't deliberately targeting the Strip's ethnic Palestinian population for eradication.
Total eradication, no.
It just wants to see it the resident population vastly reduced. And what it is deliberately doing is creating conditions favorable to this outcome, which it refers to as "voluntary transfer":
https://www.972mag.com/intelligence-ministry-gaza-population...
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.
Canadians don’t have their finger prints taken when entering USA
Fingerprints? I haven't ever had that happen. Perhaps only certain countries?
People from (all?) visa waiver countries have their fingerprints taken when entering the US, in addition to having to submit an ESTA[0] application before arrival. Last I checked, it still asked for all your social media handles (although you're not required to provide them).
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_System_for_Travel_A...
I've seen it while returning from a trip to Taiwan recently, via JFK. They took fingerprints from non-US passport holders at Customs, I think; they didn't take mine.
I am a US resident alien (green card holder) and I have my fingerprints and picture taken each time I enter the United States.
Yeah all non-citizens have to do that. If and when you become a citizen you won’t have to. It’s crazy how much nicer entering the country feels after that lol
...unless you're a US citizen, correct?
Correct.
I was in China a few years ago, didn't take fingerprints, iris, or face recognition. Just a routine passport check and that's it. I flew from Europe to Beijing, might be different if you fly from the US.
I was travelling by train from Mongolia/crossed the border by bus because it was cheaper, and when I mean by bus, the bus collects you at the station before the border and drives you to the big border checkpoint building where you cross the border by foot/where they have booths and guards that do the passport and visa checks, just like at an airport.
Maybe I'm misremembering the iris scan. If it did happen, it could be because there were loads of Mongolian students about to embark on their next semester of studies in China.
Wouldn’t it just be easier if they forced you to provide your TikTok account. They’d know everything they’d need to know about you. We’re so sure that CCP has access to that data anyways right? That’s the point of the forced sell legislation.
You do know the US government also asks for your social media accounts when you apply for a Visa? https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Enhanced%20Vettin...
It changes every month it seems, port of entry is also probably significant.
Must be the Amazon benefits for being a US citizen
They've had facial recognition in Europe at airports for a few years now.
At least if you are EU citizen, you don't need to interface with humans.
I believe, though not certain, that you can opt out simply by going to the human booths (right?)
Same thing when entering Japan, they even have machines where you can do it yourself
[dead]
A new Chinese export market: surveillance technology. I think Israel will be very interested... And the West will follow in time.
I was there and they didn't do an iris scan.
Taking a photo and fingerprint is pretty standard everywhere.
The selfie normalized public photography.
Travel by plane/DMV applications normalized fingerprinting.
What’s next? Semen and blood samples as well?
The terrorists have won. Fear has ruled the major powers of the world. And the current major power of the free world is a puppet and an all around idiot.
Too late, I already gave the US government my DNA/reference via blood sample. The military has been doing that since the early 90's.
All Americans have DNA samples stored at an abandoned mine in West Virginia. The code to open the door is the first 5 digits of Euler's number: 27828.
> What’s next? Semen and blood samples as well?
That would seriously hamper ~50% or so of the worlds population from travel
Also in singapore
I was shocked to see this program arrive in my local airport. I opt out every time, but the horrifying thing is that almost everyone simply complies with whatever is asked of them. The TSA agents use phrasing that make it seem like you are supposed to go through the facial recognition process and don’t have a choice. Yes, there are tiny signs scattered around that say you can opt out. But when the officer says “step in front of the camera”, most people comply with what seems like orders from a legal authority.
TSA will punish you for opting out of anything. If you're lucky, the least they will do is hold you up a long time so you have a good chance of missing your flight. I've also had them sexually harass me, and confiscate (e.g. steal) legal items in retaliation for opting out of things I had the legal right to opt out of. They know people are in a hurry and won't do anything about being treated unethically or illegally, because calling them out would require missing your flight.
When I opted out of the scanner once, I had to wait about 20 minutes, and then the TSA agent comes over to do a "pat down" instead, but is going inappropriately slow and squeezing my body, and saying things like "I'd bet you opted out because you like this." I regret not immediately calling them out and filing charges.
I always opt out of the scanner (even have a special shirt [1]), and without fail they always stand me by the intake (radio-leaky-end) of the baggage x-ray machine for 5+ minutes.
[1]: https://www.davisr.me/projects/art/tsashirt.jpg
Just saw this one- love the guy's eye contact also. He knows how to stand up to fascist jerks.
https://preview.redd.it/travel-safe-for-thanksgiving-v0-i3ja...
LOL I need to buy that shirt. I'm disabled and kinda dark so they're always "randomly" going for me.
How do you know the dude in blue is a fascist, and a jerk?
To be fair, I think most of the TSA agents are not, many are just doing their job and trying to bring some dignity to a tense situation. I travel a lot and have met some very kind TSA agents.
But as an organization, they clearly have a culture that allows or even encourages people to openly abuse and harass travelers, and punish people for exercising their rights. When I was being sexually harassed by a TSA agent, the other agents standing nearby allowed it to happen and said nothing.
lol
I had a phase where I would always wear this "cease your investigators" shirt, never had any comments but yea stood by the machine for 5 minutes or so, never considered the machine would be radiating outward as well as inward, but yeah, mostly did it as a small protest, thought it worth demonstrating you don't have to comply.
https://neongrizzly.com/products/cease-your-investigations-i...
[flagged]
I'm sorry you experienced this. Don't be hard on yourself for not calling them out, you shouldn't have to shoulder the burden of doing so.
I would be curious to know which airport(s) you receive this treatment from? I fly regularly between a handful of major US hubs. There is only one airport that I would be vocal about their treatment of passengers to a group of local TSA that I played co-ed sports with. The most senior one's response was that it wasn't surprising as that location (entire airport management) has had a toxic culture from the top down and they were trying to clean it up but it's still a bureaucracy. Anywhere else and I have an agent that would be having an off or bad day, but nothing like what you are describing at any of the others.
When I pull the pre-check random scanner check, I opt out and will go straight into small talk with the agent, they don't like it any more than you do, (maybe one or two might) but the majority they want it over with as quickly as you do. My personal tactic is to go into my story of being sexually molested at a checkpoint at an airport in Spain. It was very unexpected and extremely uncomfortable, including the smile after as though waiting for me to drop my number. I can joke about it now, and it gives TSA agents an opening to assure me that is not their intent without being weird about it. They're also annoyed that people who do things like that give them all a bad rep
I fly a lot and cannot remember where these events occurred. It was a small airport in California- not in the Bay Area or LA.
The last I was in San Francisco International the TSA staff came barreling out of their door and the first agent out yelled into the terminal, "MAN! I really hope someone opts out today! I can't wait to give that guy a serious patdown."
They're trained to operate in an unethical way.
They're all threats until I walk up to them and actively volunteer. Then it's all "i swear i'm not gay i'm required to touch you near your groin."
The amount of agents who act like that and then start to get shy when you smile and go through with a patdown is pretty comical.
I once had the unusual luck of being patted down by a young attractive trainee woman in sweden. They also made her to re-do it because she hadn't done it properly apparently (she had actually touched waaaaaay more than usual).
SFO doesn't use TSA
https://www.flysfo.com/about/airport-operations/safety-secur...
Other than a nearly identical uniform that says CAS in place of TSA there is no apparent difference. Which is why I probably didn't even realize. In any case my return leg was delayed so I rented a car to drive back and have never returned to commercial flights since.
To a person not familiar with the minutiae of government structure "TSA" is a job position as much as an organization, and CAS does have the former.
My 2c: I use precheck, and fly regularly between RDU and PBI. Opting out of the 3d face camera has always been easy, and I never had pushback from them. PBI has well placed opt-out signs, but I hadn't see them at RDU.
I expect that one day it won't be optional, but I'll avoid it while I can
> "I'd bet you opted out because you like this."
"You're damn right I like it, usually I have to pay for it."
Opting out of the face scanner is a totally different experience than opting out of the body scanner lol
I always opt-out, of course.
The most recent time, which was years ago now, when I was leaving the country (I'm not a US citizen, and had finished working on a H1-B).
In the EU, there's delay - they have to get someone, you go to a room, pat-down. Unremarkable.
In the US, delay, they get someone - but the "pat-down" was so forceful I had trouble keeping my balance. It seemed to me to be deliberately excessive.
Fortunately, I do not live in, and do not need to travel to, the USA.
> I opt out every time, but the horrifying thing is that almost everyone simply complies with whatever is asked of them.
I honestly blame Apple for pushing FaceID, as it completely normalized facial recognition on a mass scale. Nobody thinks about this at all anymore.
(No, it's not entirely Apple's fault, but I do think this point warrants more notice/discussion)
> Apple's fault
Apple showed how this can be done without compromise.
A combination of on-device-only FaceID and app-by-app opt-in to even trigger a validation, with on-device federal ID validation of some kind, putting you in control of presenting a cryptographically signed ID, would, in fact, be ideal for both convenience and privacy.
IF you're going to require ID, that would be a fine way.
The REAL issue is whether ID should be allowed to be required at all to move around, or if you have the right to anonymously assemble (and travel for assembly) within your own national boundary. That's the goalpost to debate.
> Apple showed how this can be done without compromise.
Sure, but also no.
I am outright stating that facial recognition did not need to become so normalized, and everyone getting used to it for the device in their pocket did no good in this regard.
> IF you're going to require ID, that would be a fine way.
Or we could just, y'know, do it the way we've been doing it for decades now.
This isn't a casual mistaken. Taking from the newly implemented border exit control that we've gotten. (If you think we don't have one, re-read that) :
The GAO found that the ability for people to understand that Americans are not required to go through the biometric exit was non-existant and the experience of opting out was very poor.
What this means is signage was not posted that indicating for Americans this is an optional process and people forming the "requirement" were not educated that it is optional for citizens.
Yet, the experience is that people forcefully push people into to posing for the camera with markings on the floor, the lack of opting in/consenting to it, and prevent people from being aware of what's going on. (Yes: You can opt out .. walk up to the board area with your passport open to your photo page)
Generally speaking you present ID to pass through security.
The facial recognition is based on the biometric data collected when you got your ID, the ID you presented to pass through security. The ID with your name, address, date of birth, and uniquely identifying number on it. The ID which is associated with your boarding pass. The ID they scan (or they scan the boarding pass which is associated with your ID) prior to letting you through security.
Using facial recognition changes nothing, absolutely nothing, except that it reduces the amount of time spent at the checkpoint.
It does not grant anyone access to any information they do not already have.
It does not impede the traveler in any way.
It does not change, at all, any aspect of one's privacy whatsoever.
"But I don't wanna..." doesn't seem like a defensible position.
It is more recent, multi angle, high res data. It allows their training data to be much better.
This "it changes nothing" attitude is unproductive.
> the biometric data collected when you got your ID
When I got my license, which I can use to board a flight in my country I did not give fingerprints or an eye scan. They have my photo, DOB, name - not more.
Maybe I’m old school but I despise the idea of the government tracking me as I travel. Time and time again they are caught violating privacy laws and abusing power.
Given that you already need government issued ID that matches the name printed on your ticket to travel on an airplane, wouldn’t the government already have the ability to track you, regardless of facial recognition?
Indeed, the government doesn't even need the ID, they ingest a data feed of Passenger Name Records (PNRs) from all airlines. This is why when TSA performs the automated identity proofing, comparing a photo of you to your ID, they don't require that you provide a boarding pass.
Comparing an ephemeral photo taken of you to your government credential at the TSA checkpoint is a temporary formality. At some point, the government credential presentation will be unnecessary.
https://www.cbp.gov/travel/clearing-cbp/passenger-name-recor... (Control-F "What information is collected?")
You are basically arguing that facil recognition is not needed, which doesn’t seem what you want to argue about.
The US government has access to all of your location history via Verizon/ATT/TMobile.
The point of this program isn't that it makes things substantially quicker at the checkpoint – it is a minor speed-up at best. The goal is to normalize the collection of biometric data, to shift the Overton window of surveillance.
The collection of biometric data is already normalized.
It has been normalized since the 1920s, when the FBI's central fingerprint repository was created.
And the end goal isn't the system that currently exists. It is a system in which the movement of passengers isn't halted. Someone watched 1990's Total Recall and said "we need a security checkpoint like that".
Also, the "Overton window" is a libertarian bullshit response to the natural shifts that occur in society, usually trotted out whenever libertarians get pissed off that "muh freedom" no longer excuses their bigotry and they can't make "because their knee-grows" jokes anymore.
So you are saying that we should just accept that we have lost our privacy rather than to continue advocating for it?
Yes.
That, instead of "people who think that this is an erosion of privacy are wrong" is exactly what I am saying.
Face scanners at airports change exactly and precisely, with no room for qualifications, unequivocally, irrefutably, nothing.
>The collection of biometric data is already normalized.
So by your logic we should just fully accept its further normalization with absolutely no pushback or regard for any notion of private life and activity?
>It has been normalized since the 1920s, when the FBI's central fingerprint repository was created.
This is a blatant bullshit comparison that you can't possibly be ignorant enough to compare to modern real-time data collection accessible to many levels of government for tracking you and your personal details down to a deeply minute level almost as you live them. The U.S government of the 1920s and for decades after had its repositories and files on people, but in any given moment they were unlikely to have any clue what you were doing or where you were and lacked the means to easily know these things unless they were specifically targeting you for a particular reason.
That by the way is as it should be, a world in which a powerful state that could easily at some point turn actively hostile in some unfair way can't also passively monitor anyone and everyone as it pleases. A world in which the state, if it wants to monitor someone heavily, needs to make an effort to do it, and through means that can only be sanctioned by specific legal procedures, for specific activities, based on specific legal motives.
No, the Overton window is not "libertarian bullshit" about natural shifts in society. There's no natural law that makes total surveillance axiomatic to a society, and normalizations of dangerously abnormal permissiveness are very real in many social contexts.
>usually trotted out whenever libertarians get pissed off that "muh freedom" no longer excuses their bigotry
What the fuck are you even talking about at all here? What's bigoted about wanting personal freedom or defensible privacy? So because some random hypothetical racist libertarian likes to make off-color jokes, defending privacy is only something done by racist bigots?
>So by your logic we should just fully accept its further normalization with absolutely no pushback or regard for any notion of private life and activity?
Yes.
That, instead of "people who think that this is an erosion of privacy are wrong" is exactly my logic.
Face scanners at airports change exactly and precisely, with no room for qualifications, unequivocally, irrefutably, nothing.
Sorry I hurt your libertarian feelings. Some more YouTube videos on stoicism may help. They won't, but keep thinking they will.
If anything friend it's you who's got the childish little mindset about these things, and other people. What a silly way to use a brain.
I was with you until "doesn't grant them info that they don't already have." It gives them the opportunity to update their face model of you in a confirmed and consistent manner.
It also doesn't improve anything:
An agent comparison of you vs the id is still considered to be the gold standard. When this system fails, you have to default to the agent's comparison. This is a slow down compared to the previous scenario.
The time for an id comparison isn't the bottleneck in security. It's the physical actions used to go through the TSA and the built in inconsistency to prevent people from speedrunning the screening.
If it doesn’t change anything, why is it needed then? And I don’t think it is faster than a human matching the ID card against a person at all.
It could be used to "update" the record.
What do you think opting out does exactly? For the system to work they must already have your photo associated with your name and ID. And even if you opt out they’re still tracking your movement. It seems like an impotent protest so I don’t bother.
They make it opt out so they don't need to demonstrate the cost/benefits of making it required.
They make it opt out because there are always a few people who object[1], so this is a safety valve.
If everyone opted out ("I am Spartacus") then it would stop and they would have to switch to less efficient means. (If it weren't less efficient then they wouldn't need this one.)
As John Gilmore points out at http://new.toad.com/gnu/ :
"If you politely decline to show ID whenever someone asks (or demands) it, and continue politely declining regardless of how they escalate, you will discover what your rights are. You'll be surprised. You'll get away with it. Most of the people who were asking for it have no right to demand it. They've been relying on your voluntary cooperation. They forgot to tell you that part; but you just found it out for yourself. Sometimes you may discover that you didn't have the right to live, move around, or do business in your own country without government-issued documents. That's very interesting knowledge to acquire first-hand too. If you haven't recently tried exercising your right to exist and live without government permission, are you sure you still have that right?"
[1] In one of the author Robert Heinlein's biographical accounts he walks out of a hotel because they demand to see id at registration. He went to another hotel which did not.
Americans can opt out.
Nope - Canadian here, opted out in Austin.
Unless you are a Canadian born in an undesirable country: Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, .. etc. It doesn't matter if you are citizen and have a passport, you will always be racially profiled when crossing the US unfortunately and I bet the experience will be much worse under the new Administration.
You're talking about the border exit. We're talking about security after checkin.
What are you opting out of?
Every state id picture is run through facial recognition, and that data is processed to detect duplicate people and other issues. Every passport has a picture which is digitized for facial recognition.
This is a good thing, as it potentially disarms the stupid RealID fiasco with respect to ID and airports.
There is no privacy benefit to document validation.
People just want to get through an incredibly annoying experience as fast as possible, and they know the people behind them want this too. Doesn’t excuse the bullshit, but it’s much less of a dramatic “sheep bowing to authority” than made out to be here.
This is it. I don't think I've opted out of it. I know I can but I know the agent is going to make a big deal of it and the line is already long for everyone behind me so whatever lets just get through it.
Nah. In my experience when you opt out, they say “Okay,” scan your ID the same way they’ve been doing for 20 years, and you get through in the same time.
If they want to entice us with convenience, the facial recognition should allow you to just stroll through without talking to anyone.
I'll do it next time I'm flying to see what happens.
For this to work they must have already done facial recognition on everyone’s ID photos, so I fail to see what opting out even does for me from a privacy perspective. Seems like shutting the barn door after the horse is already out.
Indeed, not to mention the availability of public social media photos. To think that every intelligence agency on earth hasn’t already trained FR across their databases of IDs and material voluntarily uploaded by themselves and their family/friends…
One reason I left Facebook early on was that I didn’t like getting tagged in photos the next morning after everyone would get home from parties. Too bad for me, as long as you have a friend who don’t value your privacy, there is nothing you can do about it.
Add to this any public event, where they are well within their rights to take your picture and match it against known threat actors and the only way to not play this game is to be a hermit
> One reason I left Facebook early on was that I didn’t like getting tagged in photos the next morning after everyone would get home from parties. Too bad for me, as long as you have a friend who don’t value your privacy, there is nothing you can do about it.
I hated this too, but there was an option to disable it. I know because I used it for that very reason. I don't know if they removed it; I left Facebook probably around a decade ago and it was there when I left.
Disabling never really disables. It just appears that way. Just as nothing is ever really deleted on those platforms.
It’s a question of normalization, not data.
I don’t see opting out as an effective method to counter over reach in this case, sounds like it just makes life slightly less convenient for the TSA staff and the rare people that choose to opt out. Is the idea that a critical mass of people opt out and that slows down security enough that this pilot program is viewed as a failure?
The other form of fighting back against this, pushing lawmakers, seems far more effective
You’re right about that, and I salute your principled stance, but the last thing I want to deal with is making a protest at the checkpoint before I can get to the lounge.
These people are standing between me and a free glass of mid wine and the most comfortable place I’m going to be for the next <y> hours. They also have basically unlimited power to make my day worse, delaying me, searching me, doing all kinds of real violations of my rights.
Frankly, the quicker robots take their jobs the better, I hope this speeds it up.
I must also remind you that the reason they have this power, the reason we have this security theater, the reason we have a "safety system" that kills more people than it saves[0], is because we've passed the buck. The reason we're at this state of exhaustion _RIGHT NOW_ is because of our accumulated debt.
So at the minimum, if you're too tired to protest, at least don't try to stop those who are trying to make your life better. Those who are trying to reduce the problem you are frustrated by. If you cannot make the effort, fine I won't judge, but if you convince someone else to choose apathy, then I will. Because frankly, it means you have made __MY__ life harder. Because you have sided with those you are complaining about.
I think this is very narrow minded. It is forgetting the past. There wasn't a problem before. Is there good justification as to why we cannot return? Because as I see it, robots replacing TSA is the epitome of what I mentioned before: power being exponentially harder to remove compared to handing it out. Sometimes it is best to replace a squeaky wheel, but sometimes you need to ask if it is even necessary in the first place. In this case, I think not. So no, I don't want robots TSA agents, because frankly, it isn't the humans than are the problem, it is the system.We're humans. We're __capable__ of thinking through complex things. I hope we do not squander this gift we have.
[0] https://slate.com/business/2012/11/counterproductive-airport...
I'm not trying to advocate for apathy, I am happy there are people (like you) that are willing to have this fight, willing to sacrifice their time and risk being punished by the state for this.
Thank you. But I hope you can see how your first comment discourages others to
You're right about that, if I could edit it I would
No worries. We all make mistakes and we all need pushback. While we disagree on what actions we should take, I still appreciate that you've expressed yours. I want to make sure that no one ever prevents you from doing so.
I wonder how widely this is shared. I was shocked getting in to a Singaporean Airlines flight, and I didn’t even have to present my boarding pass. Just scanned my face at the gate and told me where I was sitting. (This wasn’t even terminal security)
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42230738
2. If people stand up for decency, they might get it.
Sure, but I'm not going to help them by volunteering additional visual data. It's also political. I'm not participating.
And then letter is correct. I had a guy retaliate for declining. He said I was making his job harder and that he'd make my life harder in return. I'm still waiting. Surely, as a TSA employee, he's got lots of connections in government. A lot of these people are unstable.
I've declined several times now, and have gotten harassed about it about 3/4 times. Whoever designed the program really did a good job getting buy-in from the lower-level employees.
Resolution, recency, additional training data to up accuracy.
Yeah, it seems pretty useless. Nothing stops them from simply doing this on publicly available data online as well.
We’ve known for over a decade that DHS, FBI, CBP, and local police buy location data.
https://www.propublica.org/article/no-warrant-no-problem-how...
The current program in limited beta test is called "TSA PreCheck Touchless".
So you need to be in TSA PreCheck, and you gave them your photo and fingerprints when you voluntarily enrolled in that program. They are probably using your passport biometrics if those are available as well.
https://www.tsa.gov/biometrics-technology/evaluating-facial-...
Lots of comments come up here every time TSA facial recognition makes the front page asking what the difference is between this and the human looking at your ID.
The answer is what happens when you don't match. I have long hair and a beard in my driver's license photo. I don't now. The license I had before I was able to renew without ever having to go in person for 15 years because of holes in California's laws about renewing driver's licenses remotely for anyone who has ever served on active duty military out of state. I have very rarely had a driver's license photo that actually looked like me, and TSA agents have commented on it pretty frequently, saying I don't look like the person on the ID I'm presenting. They let me through anyway, because what else are they supposed to do? Identification cards are in and of themselves somewhat of an element of security theater in that sense. The data are frozen in time whereas reality may constantly change.
The only reason this was ever the case was the fact that your identification photo was not regularly updated to match your current face. If the TSA is constantly taking more photos of you, then potentially it can be. The obvious next phase in a program like this is to store the photos and build a current and updateable model of what every person in the US looks like, eventually not needing the ID cards at all.
Yet again we accept the premise that we need 'more' security so it is OK to do these types of things. This implies without evidence that there is a problem and then jumps right to the, again, unfounded conclusion that this type of thing will solve that hypothetical issue. The discussion shouldn't be about how to do this 'responsibly', implicitly admitting that there is some sort of need, and instead it should be about how to dismantle things like this completely and how to stop new things like this from ever happening again.
Why would you think that is, i.e., why is it simply a given that these are ‘more secure’ and that it is needed?
This type of take almost looks like a virus.
What I find funny about their sign that says “your photo will be deleted”, it fails to specify how many memcpy’s of the bits making up the photo have been made and if they made any detours along to the way to various other software systems that may save those bits across various disks. Does “your photo will be deleted” mean ALL bits making up the photo across any systems are wiped from all records? I doubt it. I also doubt if a database lookup is done on premise on closed networked systems with no possible ways to connect to the outside world.
So a bipartisan group of Senators can write a letter to the TSA speaking out against a policy but not get themselves to bring it to the floor and vote against it? Which is, you know, their actual job?
Hard to think of their intentions as anything more than theater for their voter base.
You write a letter and hopefully that solves it.
You then hold a committee meeting and hopefully that solves it.
You finally change federal law and usually that solves it.
If it doesn't you have to start arresting people to foment change.
This is not a gentle tool.
Being subtle never works.
Of course it does. There are thousands of documented examples of this precise process working and producing good results.
Government _is_ the people. It's inappropriate to use it as a tool to bully the people.
Making it a requirement sounds like some project manager has a KPI to hit to justify the expense of the hardware rollout. Maybe a stretch since I doubt most people opted out anyway.
Either that or they took a page out of the big tech playbook where the plan was to boil the frog all along.
Did you even read the article?
And the senators’ letter quotes a talk given by TSA Administrator David Pekoske in 2023 in which he said “we will get to the point where we require biometrics across the board.”
As opposed to hoping the TSA agent doesn't properly proof you to your government credential you hand them? The data is already there, in state motor vehicle databases, and various federal databases. If you have Global Entry or PreCheck, your biometrics are already on file. The Dept of State has your photo associated with your passport, as does the DoD Common Access Card system.
Sibling comment covers this well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228984
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.
Some flight agents kinda force it on passengers, specially JetBlue ones. They say it is ‘mandatory’, but in reality they do not know or ignore their own protocols.
they do put up a sign. saw in DCA, AUS, BOS
Senators should not be complaining about this. Congress required the TSA to check identity, and soon, REAL ID will be required to fly in the US, even domestically. So what's their problem with doing it effectively?
> REAL ID will be required to fly
I’ll believe it when I see it. Something like six “final deadlines” have passed for this to happen, and every time it’s kicked years down the road. It’s an unfounded mandate with real end-user costs (in my state an REAL ID costs twice as much to obtain) that no longer seems to have a base of support in Congress.
There is only one sort of person who signs up to check internal passports and search innocent people, and I don’t care what color shirt they’re wearing these days.
> There is only one sort of person who signs up to check internal passports and search innocent people
People needing a job?
Abolish the TSA completely. Get back the billions in funds that are allocated for this security theatre. Unfortunately this will never happen
It will happen if enough voters make it clear to their elected representatives that they want them to repeal the laws passed after 9/11 that mandate the security screening that TSA does. I agree that's highly unlikely, but it was voters who clamored for those laws in the first place after 9/11, so it's voters that need to push for getting them repealed.
Not to mention that COVID revealed it all a farce. We have shown that we don't really care about millions dying.
Unless you are implying having no security at airports whatsoever (which will never happen), abolishing TSA simply means replacing one central agency with hundreds/thousands of private security agencies and companies in every state and city, which will only increase costs.
You should let SFO and the handful of other airports with private security know they can decrease costs by switching to TSA.
Except, quoting https://www.marketplace.org/2016/08/11/pros-and-cons-privati...
> Contractors provide a more flexible workforce for his airport, and on top of that, it’s easier to show people the door, he said.
> “If employees are not performing, they can be dealt with appropriately, better or more effectively on a contract side than a government side,” Sprenger said.
> Labor unions say the real reason airports want to go with contractors is simple: to cut costs. James Mudrock is the president of AFGE Local 1230, the union representing TSA workers in Sacramento, California.
[flagged]
Elon doesn’t blow much of anything other than hot air. His joke DOGE will amount to nothing other than another failed ego trip for him and Ramaswamy.
Elon’s technology first approach would be… to eliminate facial recognition?
Nah. I suspect his first target will be the NLRB.
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 databases full of people's names associated with their movements.
In both SF and NYC you can still buy transit passes anonymously with cash if you so desire.
Convenience won, though, it seems.
I think this is silly given how much Germany is actively helping a country where the PM of that country has an arrest warrant out for him through the ICC.
Germany is still facilitating an alleged genocide. The only thing that has changed is the profile of the victims. The situation now is even worse, given that practically everyone in the world knows what’s happening but life is going on as normal.
You could have made a sensible argument about how security policies in Israel move in a wrong direction, even if it isn't at all on topic. But you stumbled here too.
It’s a reply to this part of OP:
> Ask IBM what becomes of databases full of people's names associated with their movements.
None of this matters. If a state wants to commit a genocide, they will. Collection of IDs being there or not is a minuscule bump in the road there.
It is not against the law to publish photographs of someone without their consent. People post me to Instagram without my consent in Berlin all of the time.
It is against the law: https://www.lhr-law.de/en/thema/media-law/the-right-to-your-...
There are some carve outs for including you in a picture of something else, but there is, at least, social backpressure to swinging a camera around.
I appreciate the response, but it seems that database can be constructed with or without facial recognition because photo ID is already required. So, I ask again, why is this bad?
Showing ID to pass a gate is somewhat different than having a timestamped record of the fact that you passed a gate, but I agree that given it's already surveilled it's not a big difference. Still, small differences add up.
I mean, it was living memory for many HN'ers that you could travel freely in the United States with doing either. It's a post-9/11 thing that an airline ticket is associated with a unique person, and requires a matching photo ID.
There was a time when America's security forces did not routinely surveil its own peoples' movements.
When I was a kid there were classified ads like "Pan Am NYC Dec 20-28, E. Smith, $200 o.b.o" for people who wanted to resell their ticket because they couldn't make the trip. There were no id checks then.
In the 1990s the airplanes jumped at the opportunity to have required id checks so they could take control of the secondary market.
It was still possible to buy a ticket like "E. Smith", but that option was cut off a few years later.
The leviathan is often arbitrary and capricious.
(American here) A quick search shows Pew Research, National Academies Press (associated with the Library Of Congress), AmericaUnderWatch dot com, Politico and Georgetown Law .. all with varying responses to this question. In the case of social structure and law, there are many layers, interwoven, and difficult or impossible to fit into chat-level responses.
I also can't see the tracking difference between a human verifying your identity and entering that into a database and a computer verifying your identity and entering that into a database.
But it's still a valid concern as to whether or not this new system is at least as secure and privacy-respecting as the old one.
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.
No faster than having a human hold up your id and compare it, plus now you don’t have yet another digital copy of your face floating around for the police state.
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.
Well, I've seen faster lines in LAX, so YMMV?
We need more real data. Last time I went through security at SFO there were no other passengers there.
I don't disagree, but installing face scanners at the same location humans do face scanning and using them the same as they used the humans is not the same as mass surveillance.
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.
This anti-tiger rock only costs $10 billion!
Now try the bomb detector wands
I mean it's like saying what's the point of a security feature if thing that feature prevents from happening isn't happening after implementing that feature.
Sure, there's some truth to that, but shoe bombs, underpants bombs and the two liquids bombs have never been tried again. If they did, they would set off their shoes and underpants in the "cattle maze", where there are several planesfull of people, and nobody has been ID'ed, or x-rayed or swabbed.
There's nothing magical about setting off a bomb on a plane as far as terrorizing a populace goes. Bombs in the mazes before "security" would be effective, as we learned at the Boston Marathon.
I'm not arguing with that. I'm saying that out of all reasons TSA isn't effective, lack of bombs isn't one of them.
Unless you're old, then you get to keep your shoes. Only young people's shoes explode. It's science.
My hack to skip that part is to travel with kids. Keep your clothes on and just walk through the metal detector.
What makes you think this will make lines move any faster? The bottleneck has always been body/luggage scanning, and that isn't changing.
Just remove TSA. Airport security provides nothing.
So I’ve heard this a lot, but how can we actually test this? The only realistic test I can imagine here is that the TSA shuts down for a decade and we see what happens?
That’s a risk I’m willing to take. I hate the TSA. I’ll take my chances in a world without them if given the opportunity.
There's never been a bomb in the maze/lines before security. Why not?
A small comment that will probably go mostly unnoticed, but this question has always bothered me too and it's a second opportunity inside of an hour to talk about working at Disneyland post 9/11. We instituted bag checks at the intake turnstiles for the first time after that, and the result was enormous lines that backed up all the way to the streets. It left me wondering why nobody just detonated a bomb or fired the entire magazine of an Uzi into the crowd waiting to get into the park. You could still kill anywhere from hundreds to thousands of people, it's still at Disneyland. What were we really accomplishing by making it less likely to happen in the park, but possibly making it even easier to happen right outside, given the gridlock, how tightly everyone was packed, and the impossibility of hiding anywhere or running away?
Because other forms of mass travel such as trains and buses, which barely have any security checks, rarely get blown up by bombs smuggled on to them, or hijacked by guns smuggled onto them.
That's because you can't really drive trains into buildings, and while you could technically do it with a bus, it's not that feasible nor that damaging. Flying a huge intercontinental airliner fully loaded with fuel into a building is quite different.
There's very good practical reasons the terrorists chose airplanes and not trains or buses.
That is already completely mitigated by the fact that cockpit is sealed now days, so hijackers cannot kill/disable the pilots and take over.
Also passengers will fight back now. Before 911, the advice was, stay calm and do what the hijackers tell you to do. And things would work out for the most part.
That door isn't invincible: the pilots have to go to the toilet sometime.
Rail related terrorism is not uncommon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...
Some of those were at train stations, not in trains. The same type of terrorism would work any place you find dozens or hundreds of people in close proximity. The whole reason the terrorists in all these incidents targeted trains or train stations is because a somewhat-large number of people were gathered there.
If you want to destroy skyscrapers (and maybe kill thousands or tens of thousands in the process), and not just murder a few dozen people, train-related terrorism isn't going to work for you.
They test the TSA with weapons and most get through. This means people don't wish to use weapons to hijack planes, or it would happen way more often and it doesn't.
It doesn't happen now, after 9/11. 9/11 was a one-time thing, and basically ruined airliner hijacking forever for other would-be hijackers. Before 9/11, people were taught to comply with hijackers because it was just a political stunt and people generally didn't get hurt. After 9/11, passengers will now fight for their lives because they'll assume the hijackers are religious kooks who intend to murder them all by flying them into a building. A few hijackers with razor blades today will be torn limb from limb by the other passengers.
The TSA tests this yearly. They usually fail their own tests.
Anecdotal, but I haven't experienced shorter lines or faster ID checks since they implemented this facial recognition system.
That won’t happen since they will always want to go through your bags either by X-ray or by hand, that won’t change ever.
Already exists when entering the US using global entry. No need to show your passport anymore, just walk right through.
Yeah but Senators can't bypass facial recognition the way they can evasive screening. Can't you think of their rights?
see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Craig_scandal
“For any amount convenience, it’s okay to discriminate against people based on any collection of facts, including ones you can see on their face like their heritage, so long as none of those facts are mine.”
I don't like TSA or the US security state, but I really find it hard to see why this has attracted so much attention. When you enter the airport, you're surrounded by cameras from numerous government and commercial entities, no doubt performing facial recognition. When you get to your destination, your photo will be taken by the destination country plus countless other surveillance cameras along the way. And unless you like long lines, you've already submitted fingerprints and yet another photo to TSA or CBP for precheck. Even if you didn't, all REAL IDs (except a foreign passport) require digital storage of the ID photo--that's what they are matching your face to at the checkpoint.
(During the pandemic, I had a job that let me--I mean, a friend of my choice--do my own e-verify/I-9 form. When you enter your passport number, the e-Verify system spits out a digital copy of the photo you sent it to prevent counterfeit or altered photos.)
I just don't understand how one more potato quality still capture of your face, that by definition is very similar to those they already have, changes the equation much.
You've precisely described the reason I will not fly commercial anymore. All of this surveillance has a chilling effect. On citizens, on business, on international trade.
Flying privately requires none of this. Which is how you know they're not serious about security but about control of the masses.
Also, the thing you're ignoring, and perhaps why you fail to understand the problem, is you haven't bothered to ask what the false positive rate is. Would you enjoy being stopped and arrested by very cocksure police simply because a computer made a mistake and they refuse to believe that?
> Flying privately requires none of this. Which is how you know they're not serious about security but about control of the masses.
In Germany, there is no way you'll get on a commercial airfield without going through security, and if you're not a passenger but an employee or a pilot, you'll need a comprehensive background check.
Only exemption for now is ultralight aircraft because these are about as dangerous as a car (or if you just compare kinetic energy, even less dangerous because they're barely half a ton in weight.
> a commercial airfield
Your "commercial airfield" may actually be two airfields in one. This is not uncommon. There is a "commercial" side which is where public carriers usually work and there is a "private" side which is where individuals and often cargo works.
Aside from this there are plenty of private airfields in Germany.
> ultralight aircraft because these are about as dangerous as a car
The cool things about vehicles is you can put things in them. Things like explosives. The incredibly low tech version of this is currently in use in some parts of the world, and that is where you attach a mortar to a drone, then go drop it on a target.
Because they are using more than just a 2d photo, these things are taking almost microscopic details in. I just pay the devil and ask for the personal treatment and skip these things. These are not potato quality and the government isn’t as backward at tech as you think. Remember when you’re dealing with cops there is nothing you can say or do that will be to your advantage in court , the same goes in real life. Skip all of these types of security theater as it’s possible. While I did not want to see the new regime change in Washington because of the high chance of economic and challenges to democracy, one of the things they might cut back on is stuff like this; a Harris admin certainly was not going to be.
At all the airports I have been through using this system, the device in use appeared to be a Logitech webcam. I doubt the resolution is higher than 1080p.
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?
These are metaphors for common events.
You're working for a client who wants some changes, and more changes, and more changes, and is difficult to work with. At some point you may have to fire the client. As a simile, this is like a rubber band being stretched to the breaking point.
Or, the new boss is a very bad manager. Some people quit to move to another job. Each one is a rope snapping. If enough ropes snap - if enough people quit and are not replaced fast enough - then that department can no longer function.
To clarify further, "rubber band to break" is because a rubber band can be stretched and stretched, but not without limit. Once it has reached its limit, it breaks with a snap, and cannot easily be fixed.
For the metaphor "one of the ropes to snap", think of a cargo net carrying a heavy load. Each rope has a different tensile strength, and the load is not perfectly balanced. It's possible for a heavy load to break one rope, but the net still hold because the load shifts onto the other ropes, which have reserve strength. However, this should be a warning, because as more ropes break the less reserve there is, until the net is no longer able to hold the cargo.
I don't know what you mean by "eventually will go wrong" in this context where several senators say that things have already gone 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.
I don't fly anymore if I don't have to because of this security theatre, so the one thing it has a positive effect on is perhaps ecological. Otherwise it is completely hysterical, a remnant of some US lawmakers that wanted to look though at some point. It has grown and grown and just is a caricature of sensible security policies.
That autocratic states readily pick up on it should give you pause, but instead of questioning the efficiency of a security apparatus, it is excused because the status quo is already shitty.
God I hate this argument and this blunt misunderstanding of computer vision. (I've dealt with it so many times on reddit) Frequently I'm met with these arguments with some imaginative justification for this technology. At this point it's hard to be convinced that the arguements aren't an AstroTurf by security vendors. (Yes dang, I realize this is bad to make this accusation to say but I'm speaking generically and over a large group of people)
Additionally you threw in a false equivalency: But a ton of things are going on..you're useless in fighting it. On top of that you threw in an accusation that "if you don't then face longer lines".
The cameras that are above aren't good enough to do a confident identification of an individual. They're great for tracking where unique blobs go.
The picture they are doing a comparison against is a profile picture and consistent lighting. Additionally the old picture that is on your license is a much older photo. The thread here is that the people who are taking your image now are updating their models and maintaining the models of what you look like. With that they are able to retroactively and perform future lookups on different visual datasources about what you did. (Gas stations, stores, weed shop, adult toy store, walking down the red light district, being on a train, etc)