Lip service for airport biometrics guardrails now could lead to nightmares later

Biometrics used at U.S. airports is primarily discussed as a tool for fighting the perceived security crisis du jour. Yesterday’s radical Islamic terrorists are today’s unwanted Latin American immigrants.

There is a junior crisis now and it is lack of convenience. Everyone all the way down to AI algorithm writers are pushing, in particular, facial recognition as the grease to eliminate friction caused by having to make travel safe.

Obviously, biometric recognition in airports is first a security tool used to know who (as in anyone who has been scanned by a government agency) is where.

But facial recognition today is almost entirely sold as a convenience. There is talk in a set of recent presentations and commentaries of fighting bias and protecting data and privacy, but not with the degree of detail used to describe a near-future when travelers are all but levitated from home to the gate and back.

Star Alliance, a global airline partnership, has had a biometrics program at least since 2020, and is operating in four airports – Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich in Germany and Vienna, Austria. Biometrics is promoted as a way to make boarding and bag drop more efficient and convenient for flyers.

Partnership CEO Jeffrey Goh, quoted in an industry marketing publication, said the program has created a positive customer experience and helped with process inefficiencies.

Interviewed by trade publication Federal News Network, Jody Hardin, an executive director with the Customs and Border Protection agency, repeatedly emphasized how border procedures are being streamlined for passenger convenience and operational savings.

Goh, speaking at an Airline Passenger Experience Association confab, is quoted by the association saying that Star Alliance stores encrypted face images “in a biometrics hub.” There is “a lot of efficiency behind that.”

The program conforms with privacy by design, he says, and travelers can manage their consent for data sharing with other countries.

Justin Erbacci, the CEO of Los Angeles World Airports, talking at the same event, said the facilities it manages use the border agency’s credential authentication technology 2, or CAT 2, system.

Erbacci also is excited that facial biometrics can make it easier for passengers to “enjoy themselves in the lounge or at many of our retail or food and beverage offerings.”

The organizations are not off base. The International Air Transport Association has said its annual survey of flyers shows that people are most concerned about making travel simple and convenient.

In fact, three-quarters of respondents “want to use” biometric systems rather than passports and boarding passes.

Facial recognition has been increasingly inserted into the entry and exit programs that the border agency operates at airports to, again, know who is where. Its Traveler Verification Services program compares a live facial image with a digital image already held by the government, such as a passport photo.

To the extent that this successful, it could only come after the traveling public accepted post-9/11 security authority, said Hardin, who is the CBP’s executive director for planning, program analysis and evaluation.

“I think the majority of the traveling public is identified by us as being compliant with the regulations,” she said.

It is there that some will pause. The U.S. re-organized a massive portion of the executive branch to create the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11. That crisis – portrayed at the time as existential – set in motion procedures, regulations, laws, spending and debates about civil and human rights.

Virtually every prohibition and requirement for how biometrics is used in air travel in the United States does not carry the force of federal law. It is voluntary and up to businesses or some regional governments to create and enforce.

And the record of how the U.S. government reacts to threats domestically, while better than some nations, is less commendable than its aspirations. And the impacts have long-lasting effects.

The results can be seen in the Transportation Security Administration, which was created as part of the Department of Homeland Security.

News publication The Verge in August posted an investigation under the headline ‘The Humiliating History of the TSA.’

What follows are insider interviews, many with named sources, about how the government has pitted TSA officers and the flying public against each other in a bitter fight neither can win.

There are abusive travelers calling officers fascists, waving knives and erroneously yelling about their rights. On the other side are officers, who are apt to be professional as any other working people but who also wield dehumanizing power with little oversight.

The article does not get into biometrics, but it does not really have to.

The TSA posted a rebuttal to The Verge’s article here.

The government and industry are dangling idealized incentives before travelers. If biometrics can ever deliver on the promises, it will not be before the systems are proved imperfect. Or, worse, another crisis comes a long and the niceties are removed from programs and algorithms that are no longer tools used for the public but, like the TSA, used openly on the public.

Article Topics

airport biometrics  |  biometrics  |  CBP  |  digital identity  |  facial recognition  |  passenger processing  |  TSA  |  user experience