Face scans at airports are coming to the U.K.; it will happen here

A face recognition system will scan faces to match them against the biometric

chips on passports in England. Photograph: Image Source/Getty

In the United Kingdom, a new level of scrutiny is about to be added to the other indignities air travellers suffer from. I have been on roughly 80 different airplanes in the last 16 months, and have written here fairly extensively about the airlines and airport security, and the indignities to which we are subjected as we try to get from one place to the other[1]:

According to the U.K. Guardian:

"Airline passengers are to be screened with facial recognition technology rather than checks by passport officers, in an attempt to improve security and ease congestion, the Guardian can reveal.

"From summer, unmanned clearance gates will be phased in to scan passengers' faces and match the image to the record on the computer chip in their biometric passports.
Border security officials believe the machines can do a better job than humans of screening passports and preventing identity fraud. The pilot project will be open to UK and EU citizens holding new biometric passports.

"But there is concern that passengers will react badly to being rejected by an automated gate. To ensure no one on a police watch list is incorrectly let through, the technology will err on the side of caution and is likely to generate a small number of "false negatives" - innocent passengers rejected because the machines cannot match their appearance to the records.

"They may be redirected into conventional passport queues, or officers may be authorised to override automatic gates following additional checks. "

[1]

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The absurdity of excesive air traveler scrutiny

The New York Times blog on air travel--Jet Lagged--had a great editorial (The Airport Security Follies), on December 28th, by Patrick Smith, a commercial pilot and the author of Salon's "ask the pilot." Read the full editorial here.

"Six years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, airport security remains a theater of the absurd. The changes put in place following the September 11th catastrophe have been drastic, and largely of two kinds: those
practical and effective, and those irrational, wasteful and pointless. The
first variety have taken place almost entirely behind the scenes. Explosives
scanning for checked luggage, for instance, was long overdue and is perhaps the most welcome addition.

"Unfortunately, at concourse checkpoints all across America, the madness of passenger screening continues in plain view. It began with pat-downs and the senseless confiscation of pointy objects. Then came the mandatory shoe removal, followed in the summer of 2006 by the prohibition of liquids and gels. We can only imagine what is next."
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