In light of increasing criticism of the Biden Administration’s development of the technology, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is warning against the use of face recognition by the TSA at American airports and drawing comparisons to the systems used by Russia and China to track its citizens.
Rep. Jordan stated on Twitter that “nations like China and Russia employ facial recognition technology to track their populations. Do you believe Joe Biden’s TSA will employ it as well?”
The tweet came after reports that the TSA had considerably boosted the degree of facial recognition technology at airports, with 16 of the biggest airports in the country now using face scanning technology. Jordan is the new chairman of the influential House Judiciary Committee.
The expansion is the first stage in the TSA’s aim to fully replace human verification with machine verification at airports, which one opinion writer for Fox News called “one of the greatest attempts to gather sophisticated biometric information of law-abiding Americans in US history.”
Using Fox News
“TSA administrator David Pekoske claims that his organization has discovered that the facial recognition algorithm is more precise than human TSA agents. TSA also asserts that in the future, facial recognition technology may be combined with government databases to completely do away with the need for airport IDs. Although the program may eventually prove useful and efficient, there are serious long-term risks to individual liberty that outweigh any potential advantages.”
“The TSA claims that while it will not preserve the majority of traveler facial scan data, some will be kept for law enforcement and system testing purposes. The TSA has also stated that under the present scheme, travelers will have the option to completely decline facial scans. However, there is no assurance that these regulations will stand indefinitely, and there is no congressional legislation that would forbid the TSA from retaining biometric data in the future.”
While privacy has received the majority of the criticism, Washington Post columnist Geoffrey Fowler said that the TSA’s use of facial recognition technology being considered racist was his “number one” worry in an interview with PBS.
“People of Black or Asian descent may be up to 100 times less reliably identified than white men, according to federal government algorithms from 2019,” stated Fowler.
“In the context of air travel, that presents a lot of issues. Could imposters be passing through these systems? Another is if they would cause persons of color to receive unjust treatment at the airport. Will those with darker skin be directed to separate lines for additional inspection?”
