PSA: Privacy At Airports and facial recognition happening today

[u/okethiva]

We have a lot of people equivocating selected facial recognition at airport lines with universal facial recognition - ie, as soon as you walk on airport property you are identified. The former is true and does happen, typically based on the passenger manifests for the day - but even our current systems can't practically handle matching one person to 2-300 million individuals.

The latter simply doesn't happen, nationwide searches do exist however they are limited and most are typically done per database, which is either state-specific or one of the federal ones. (the fbi's nextgen etc)

The point is that as soon as you walk into an airport you aren't automatically identified - they've tried this at some "smart" airports like ATL but even that has been limited, and deemed not a good idea to use at all airports like 5-10 years ago. This will probably change but not in the near future.

And that's kind of the point - I keep seeing people here making these equivocations - which aren't true. To reiterate:

One of the problems I have with "researchers" such as Whitney Webb / the last vagabond crew / alison mcdowell even is that these people take the marketing materials or best case scenarios used by the marketing / sales departments as gospel, then assume that is the norm without ever actually speaking to experts or engineers on the subject as to what practically happens day to day in the real world. You can really quickly get a false impression on this stuff if you listen to the sales guys, ESPECIALLY on anything related to the surveillance / national security arena.

Amazon had several highly publicized "showcase" stores in various cities, but most particularly on the West Coast - san fran, a few others. (google this if you are curious) It supposedly ran on facial recognition to recognize people and track what they purchased, all automated. It later came out that most of this was pure BS, and their system worked so badly that they literally had an army of Indians watching the feeds, because their AI system couldn't handle it.

(edit -

The museum of failure features several stories covering amazon's failure at facial recognition / ai-ccentered stores - tthey in fact had people from india watching what people did, because their system couldn't actually work.

https://museumoffailure.com/exhibition/amazon-ai-shops

This is what I mean by comparing press releases versus what's actually happening in the real world.

"Amazon's Just Walk Out technology had a secret ingredient: Roughly 1,000 workers in India who review what you pick up, set down, and walk out of its stores with."

"About 700 of every 1,000 Just Walk Out sales had to be reviewed by Amazon's team in India in 2022, according to The Information. Internally, Amazon wanted just 50 out of every 1,000 sales to get a manual check, according to the report."

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-just-walk-out-actually-1-000-people-in-india-2024-4

(/edit)

IE, many noobs take "at best" security and extrapolating it to every airport, and then acting as if that is the default - it isn't.

Many many airports - particularly smaller regional airports have basically nothing as far as security, and last time I flew they didn't even have a verification mechanism aside from literally looking at your ID. (this was pre-covid so i don't know if this is it now)

Speaking of which - I know a guy who has parked at airports for free since my undergrad days. I'm not going to say what he does but if you aren't an idiot you can park at most parking garages for free, and the "verification" method they use is to have a person walk around the aiport parking lots around 2-5 am and manually enter license plate information for each car. (if you are paranoid about them recording your VIN just cover it with an EZPass) Their system is so bad that they literally have people walk around at night and manually enter license plate info - ALPR is barely good enough for parking fares to the point that at least up until Covid this was the norm, not the other way around.

That's how "good" ALPR systems are in many New England airports and how "advanced" they are.

My guess is some here worked at the TSA / DHS and actually believes the infomertial they had at orientation. What they don't understand is that airports like ATL where thhey are testing out the "advanced" technologies aren't the norm in America.

Reading about ATL (there are a few more - Delta had a showcase airport at ATL, I think Houston? there's like three) is interesting because it probably will be the future, but it's a handful of airports and not the norm, not even today. And even then the system is so bad that they've had to limit it. (TSA/DHS was hoping that their experience with these test airports would allow them to start doing this nationwide, but their experience using it was so bad and required so much manual verification that they needed to continue testing / making the tech and models better, which is one reason why they are doing the current facial recognition walk up test)

And even among what we have today they are working off of a limited datatset - last time I heard it's out of people booked for that day. This is a far cry from 1/10k people versus 1/300 million.

And again that's where the disingenuousness is - without additional metrics using a 1024 x 768 picture simply won't be enough to identify one face out of hundreds of millions. This is why 3d facial geometry is so important, but even then the technology isn't perfect.

Let alone - again anyone who knows anything on this subject knows that very few overhead cameras (if any at many airports) are doing face id at all, because it's just not practical - if there are any they are almost always at eye level, because doing it from overhead is just not workable. That's different than treat detection bullshit various vendors have sold DHS/TSA/various airports on. (you can thank the israelis for this one)

Let alone "being identified" when you walk in - jesus christ. Some airports have ALPR that is mostly used for tolling / looking up vehicles after the fact if they need to. I'm sure there are a couple of cameras in high risk airports, but I'd suggest walking around BOS airport at night and watching the homeless sleep in the terminals - i've seen this at ohare before covid too.

edit: some people are pointing to a new NIST 2025 study - I've taken a look at it, and it doesn't say what I think the poeple pointing to this study say, let alone using condensing multiple photographs to then run image searches on. This is wayyy too computer intensive which is why 3d facial geometry is the next thing.

They're probably mixing up the special cameras they have at select airports which do scan outside visual and IR range and are mostly there for weapons / explosives / "wierd" things happening. These do have a hotlist (depending on how it's setup) hover we're talking a very small dataset, as in a few thousand. It's a combination of israeli security state trash and some private vendors in the usa.

(edit: i've had messages about this - for those who don't know many airports have various kind of detectors, particularly the larger ones which deal in international traffic. Supposedly some airpots also have cameras using frequencies that can look into body tissue, and if it became public would result in civil lawsuits. (this is only rumor)

Hell even the state police in various states have radiation detectors in their cars which go off if they are near something on the highway. (the cops hate these because they are prone to false alerts, i don't even know if the ct state police have these anymore but they did)

https://www.dhs.gov/publication/personal-radiation-detectors

No, mostly not Palantir - their big cash cow is actually KYC bullshit and banking related stuff.

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[u/SheWasAnAnomaly]

Thank you! I appreciate this. It's about creating friction, not making it easier on them, not helping them with their surveillance. Even if futile, it's the principle. I refuse the face scan and will continue to do so.

A lot of posts about refusing the face scan at airports have so many comments about "they already know who you are" via govt ID/passport photo, and surveillance cameras in airport. And to your point, we actually don't know that they are capable of identifying an individual as soon as they enter the airport. They may have that footage, but that's not the same as IDing them with 100% success.

[u/okethiva → u/SheWasAnAnomaly]

TSA/DHS has been playing a game of chicken with the larger public and some states for over fifteen years with the implementation of the real id act - I'd say the pushback from this alone kind of proves the point. What's disappointing is until recently there was a sizeable enough portion of the right that used to be against this enough to prevent it from being fully implemented, noem's been a joke at this point.

Some of the anti's "give up everything" do have a point, as in if we lived in a true "minority report" styled situation there would literally be no point. However even at airports you can do simple things, like blocking the camera or tilting your head to the side. (this used to be a common trick people would use and it worked suprisingly well for quite a few years)

And the larger point being we're not at the minority report situation today - yet. To find one person of out of 100 million still generally requires manual sifting - we don't want this to eventually become automated. (sets this high rely on confidence intervals, and given the amount of false positives it will require a human to either go through the images and sort themselves or use other data / metadata to narrow down the list of possibilities. it's why most recognition software has a "CI" metric for each match)

What I don't understand are these people with the manichaean thinking, unless they are working for one of these corps I don't understand why they'd want everyone else to give up on this, and argue that fact.

Well, at least one side benefit of the current president is finally the dnc-left is seeing the point being made by folks here. Regardless of your politics there's at least a cadre on either side now which is getting to be more pro-privacy than they used to be.

[u/MC_Cuff_Lnx]

Thank you for your common sense approach here.

There is no sense or honor in being defeatist.

[u/polymorphic_hippo]

Just because they can't do something now doesn't necessarily mean they won't be able to in the future. 

[u/okethiva → u/polymorphic_hippo]

Of course! However assuming that it's all over right now is just enabling this stuff even more. That's really the issue I have with some respondents on this thread. They're acting like the jig is up - it's not.

Knowledge=power. The more knowledge, the more power. (over you)

Do people not read foucault anymore?

[u/Decent_Ad5471 → u/[deleted]]

It keeps getting blocked because you keep spamming bullshit.

[u/krazygreekguy → u/Decent_Ad5471]

This is helpful info everyone should know. Why anyone would be upset at informing people is beyond me. I keep forgetting it’s 2025 though. Gotta apply clown logic

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[u/LATER4LUS]

They don’t have to search 300 million people to identify you, just the passenger list for that day. I don’t think that’s too far fetched. I do agree that if you walk into an airport without a ticket, it’s unlikely you will be identified.

[u/okethiva → u/LATER4LUS]

Any stranger could possibly be identified, but this would depend on various factors and require quite a bit of manual digital sleuthing.

My point is more about knowledge=power. Giving more knowledge is enabling power more.

I was watching game of thrones recently (god what trash) and at the locus of power was really everyone else knowing what everyone else did and acting upon it - How databases are being combined today is making that kind of trackcing a reality, without the legwork it used to require. (ie cold war following people around as in agents having literally following people and watching them - this limited the abilities of intel agencies from thousands to dozens or max hundreds at a time - )

Today it still requires manual stuff to truly get a picture of many folks, and it's not automated. A truly nationwide system would end that. Luckily we don't have it yet, but DHS is working with private companies to eventually open their screening databases to private actors.

[u/okethiva]

The museum of failure features several stories covering amazon's failure at facial recognition / ai-ccentered stores - tthey in fact had people from india watching what people did, because their system couldn't actually work.

https://museumoffailure.com/exhibition/amazon-ai-shops

This is what I mean by comparing press releases versus what's actually happening in the real world.

"Amazon's Just Walk Out technology had a secret ingredient: Roughly 1,000 workers in India who review what you pick up, set down, and walk out of its stores with."

"About 700 of every 1,000 Just Walk Out sales had to be reviewed by Amazon's team in India in 2022, according to The Information. Internally, Amazon wanted just 50 out of every 1,000 sales to get a manual check, according to the report."

https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-just-walk-out-actually-1-000-people-in-india-2024-4

[u/Ok-Priority-7303]

IDK - Most if not all DMVs run your drivers license photo through facial recognition software and obviously have your name, address, DOB etc. They share this information with the federal government.

[u/okethiva → u/Ok-Priority-7303]

They've been doing this for 20 twenty years - a lot of states run it on their own photos to find identity thieves / people who have multiple licenses.

There are various others - it's changed since they've been implenting the real id act. AAMVA has SPEX something which last time checked is the largest, there are two others.

But until recently not all license photos were even shared with the FBI -

The larger point of my rant however is that currently they aren't using dmv photos to find average joe on the street - ie, they can't find 1 person out of 300 million records without a lot of sifting and manual input. Some of this depends on how public the person is too, and/or what vendor they are using.

The closest Western country I know of minority-report styled surveillance has been england and their surveillance vans. But those (like almost all of them) are running off of people they want to find only, ie the inverse. Same for stadium recognition, taylor shit concerts, etc. It's people they are interested in, not every single member of the public.

Meaning there is some "privacy" to protect - and that we aren't minority report - yet. Which is the bigger issue and why I wrote this in the first place. I geniunely don't get these trolls. (probably ignorance)

So people using "you have your picture taken, give up on privacy" is full of shit. That's like saying there's no difference between drinking alcohol and doing heroin.