Bombshell airport facial recognition report today: 80% of travelers concerned

A new report out today from Algorithmic Justice League on TSA facial recognition at airports comes as it’s a hot topic in Washington, DC. A popular bipartisan bill is moving despite heavy industry lobbying to stop it.

The report is here: https://www.ajl.org/flyreport

80% of those surveyed were concerned about the collection of facial recognition data at airports, stating things like this traveler at Orlando International in September 2024: “I don’t like people getting my facial data. This is part of the reason I got off Facebook. Not sure if everything was completely removed but in the future privacy would only be for the wealthy. If this is the only wealth I give to my kids, I will do my best.”

The following statement can be attributed to Lia Holland (they/she), Campaigns & Communications Director at Fight for the Future, the creators of BanFacialRecognition.com:

“Everyday people are rightly concerned about the TSA’s stated goal of blanketing all airports in AI surveillance like facial recognition. The past year has been a tour-de-force in how AI systems of all kinds are dangerous and experimental technologies that cannot be relied on for decisions that impact our safety. Unfortunately, requiring every traveler to undergo facial recognition isn’t about improving airports for travelers. It’s about replacing TSA agents with AI, squeezing travelers for more money, and feeding more data on us all into Customs and Border Protection’s database.

Airports are a perfect environment for maximum data collection on everyone: corporations and governments want to film you from the time that you arrive at the airport until you’re on the plane—at the security checkpoint, and then as you board, they verify your identity twice. Then everything that you’ve done in the airport—from what you buy, to biometric information on how you walk or psuedoscientific assessments of your emotions and mental health, to how often you go to the bathroom, can be collected every time.

Our lives and safety are truly what is at stake with the choice to force all travelers into a facial recognition regime. The examples of how relying on tech to remain secure goes terribly wrong come up nearly every week—this week, the Tea app’s poor security was exploited to dox thousands of women who were trying to warn each other of bad dates—but forced to go through identity verification first. Now, their home addresses are on a map that incels are gleefully sharing across the web. There’s nothing to say that a year from now, some Microsoft vulnerability won’t out the TSA’s or Spirit Airlines’ data on us all for everyone to see. Or worse, create a back door through which bad actors can study the vulnerabilities of every airport or traveler nationwide.

Airlines can’t even keep their flight databases from regularly crashing and stranding thousands. The audacity that airline lobbyists have to insist to lawmakers that they will be able to keep our sensitive personal info safe is pure hubris. The same can be said for Customs and Border Protection, which had their database of traveler photos breached in 2019. And to promise, as the travel industry lobby is now doing in DC, that facial recognition will make lines shorter? It’s ridiculous. They’re already using facial recognition on most of us, and the lines haven’t gotten shorter. What’s more, they can scan a boarding pass just as fast as someone can get in position in front of an AI camera.

It’s also important to recognize that airlines want this technology so that they can use it for profit. Complete surveillance of everyone in the airport would let Delta use its price-gouging AI to scam us out of even more money.

Facial recognition at airports is not for the benefit of the traveler—in the end it makes us less safe while worsening the travel experience. The only people who benefit from forcing us all to endure this technology are the shareholders at airlines, facial recognition companies, and authoritarian bureaucrats who would weaponize CBP’s traveler database to supercharge deportations or surveil activists. The industry’s plan is to turn airports into a lab where humans are the rats that creepy and invisible AIs study and exploit without a care for their lives, and lawmakers should shut it down.”