CBP Deploys Facial Recognition to Verify Identities of Departing Int'l Travelers
 

http://www.fiercemobilegovernment.co...s-r/2015-08-04


CBP testing wireless tech at US airports to verify identities of foreign travelers in real time

August 4, 2015 | By Dibya Sarkar

Customs and Border Protection officers at 10 major airports across the country will test out a new wireless handheld device that collects biometric and biographic data on foreign travelers exiting the United States in real time, according to a notice published last week in the Federal Register.

The intent of the Biometric Exit Mobile Air Test, or BE-Mobile Air Test, program, which is a follow-up to two previous so-called "air exit" pilot programs, is to use that information to verify travelers' identities, the notice said. The program will not apply to U.S. citizens and certain other international travelers are also exempted.

In those previous tests – one conducted by CBP at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport and another conducted by the Transportation Security Administration at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport – federal officers also collected fingerprints using a mobile or portable device and biographic data from foreign travelers leaving the U.S.

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The airports selected for the BE-Mobile Air Test program include: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Los Angeles International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, Miami International Airport, Chicago O'Hare International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport, and Washington Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C.

I thought I had posted in reference to this, but perhaps I had just queued it up for later discussion elsewhere with regards to expecting more departure gate checks by CBP and who was going to make money off of this.

more delays and more questioning, now even at the departure gates.

I'm really surprised that the US doesn't do immigration checks upon exit. Most European countries already do it. Of course, the US will make it about 100% more complicated than most EU countries.

The U.S. does electronic immigration checks upon exit by air. And sometimes at airports and elsewhere, the U.S. does physical immigration and customs checks upon exit, although that is far from common.

No Schengen country has a complete record of my entries into and exits out of the Schengen zone on my US passports for even this year.

CBP Testing Biometric Technology to Verify International Departures ID
 

Sorry if I missed it if it was already mentioned here but this is from the online edition of the Atlanta Journal/Constitution:


Customs testing facial comparison technology at Hartsfield-Jackson
June 13, 2016 | Filed in: Airline industry, airport, Atlanta, Delta, Hartsfield-Jackson, security.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is testing facial comparison technology at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport to verify travelers’ identities.

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Travelers will have their digital photo taken while showing their boarding pass before heading down the jet way for their flight. Travelers 15-78 years old will be required to go through the process, which is expected to take less than three seconds.

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CBP said images of travelers will be held in secure data systems for “post-departure analysis,” and the data of travelers with U.S. passports will be deleted immediately once their identity is confirmed. For other travelers, the test data will be deleted after the test ends.

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Sure it will be. :rolleyes:

Data Security provided by the same IT folks on duty for Snowden, Manning, and the Russians at the DNC. :rolleyes:

So passengers will have their photos taken. What will these photos be compared to?

For US citizens, with the passport photo.

For all others, probably against every government database (US or otherwise) they can get access to.

We aliens get photos on entry to the USA (not 100% sure they do that at land borders though - possibly related to the use of paper I-94s there?).

Police and politicians love to throw around the idea of Facial RecognitionTechnology. They've been doing it for years.
It makes them feel powerful. However, the truth is computers are not very good at discriminating human faces. Besides, if it did work, by some miracle, millions would walk around with masks on, just to prevent gov't goons from tracking their every move. File under : "false alarm" in the Odyssey Files.

The truth is they are quite powerful nowadays, and can work really well when the subject has to take a photo while looking directly at a camera (the CBP tell arriving aliens to look directly at their camera for a photo, plus they have access to the photos stored in the passport chips, and/or Visa photos which everyone without a "biometric" passport needs nowadays). There is a ton of research in this area, even facebook reliably recognise people in photos. You should brush up on your research because this stuff moves fast.

Looking at e-gates, which use facial recognition to admit travellers into a country: the original UK e-gates were incredibly unreliable (built 10 years ago or so?), the new ones seem to be extremely reliable (in fact seemingly reliable enough that they didn't fit an explicit bypass lane for people with recognition issues). One of the most paranoid nations on earth is happy using facial recognition to protect their border...

So what happens if one refuses to be photographed??