Florida’s busiest airport is becoming the first in the nation to require a face scan of passengers on all arriving and departing international flights, including U.S. citizens, according to officials there.
Airports in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and Washington already use face scans for some departing international flights, but they don’t involve all international travelers at the airports like the program’s expansion in Orlando.
The image from the face scan is compared to a Department of Homeland Security biometric database that has images of people who should be on the flight, in order to verify the traveler’s identity.
A computer compares each traveler’s passport photo on file – or a visa photo of those not from the U.S. – with their newly captured portrait.
Passengers do not need to show a boarding pass, passport or any other identification.
Once the image is captured, subway-style gates then open up allowing passengers to walk along the air bridge to the aircraft.
Orlando airport has worked with British Airways to test facial-recognition, or biometric screening and now aims to have all international flights using the technology
International passengers are starting to step onto their flights with a simple stare at Orlando International Airport with new facial recognition technology introduced
Florida’s busiest airport is becoming the first in the nation to require a face scan of passengers on all arriving and departing international flights, including U.S. citizens
For several months, the airport has worked with British Airways to test facial-recognition, or biometric screening (file photo)
For several months, the airport has worked with British Airways to test facial-recognition, or biometric screening.
U.S. citizens at these airports can opt out, but the agency ‘doesn’t seem to be doing an adequate job letting Americans know they can opt out,’ said Harrison Rudolph, an associate at the Center on Privacy & Technology at the Georgetown University Law Center.
U.S. citizens at the Orlando airport will be able to opt out just like at the other airports if they don’t want to provide their photograph, Jennifer Gabris, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in an email.
However, a notice about a possible rule change for the program states that ‘U.S. citizens may be required to provide photographs upon entering or departing the United States.’
The system alarms some privacy advocates who say there are no formal rules in place for handling data gleaned from the scans, nor formal guidelines on what should happen if a passenger is wrongly prevented from boarding.
The Orlando announcement marks a step up in the scope of the face scan program, Rudolph said.
A similar system is in place at British Airways gates at Los Angeles International Airport
A biometric facial recognition screening machine in a British Airways international gate
The airport, along with U.S. Customs have begun using facial recognition scanners on some flights and will expand the program to all incoming and departing international flights
‘We’re not talking about one gate,’ he said. ‘We’re talking about every international departure gate, which is a huge expansion of the number of people who will be scanned. Errors tend to go up as uses go up.’
John Newsome, the airport’s chief information officer, said all of the airport’s 25 carriers with foreign flights and the two border checkpoints will be equipped for biometric screening through this summer.
The decision means spending $4 million on gates and high-definition cameras for departing and arriving international flights.
Orlando International Airport had about 6 million international passengers in the past year.
Rudolph said he has concerns about the face scans’ accuracy, since some research shows they are less accurate with racial minorities, women and children.
The airport has been testing out the tech since late April in an effort to speed up wait times throughout the security process
Researchers say this is because photos used to train the face-scanning software underrepresent minorities, women and young people.
Two U.S. senators last month sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security, which is home to the border protection agency, urging that formal rules be implemented before the program is expanded.
‘It will also ensure a full vetting of this potentially sweeping program that could impact every American leaving the country by airport,’ said the letter from U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. and U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.
Dan Tanciar, Customs and Border Protection’s deputy director for biometric screening, said the photos of foreign nationals will be kept for 75 years.
‘For U.S. citizens, we take that picture and match it against a document and very soon after discard that live photo,’ Tanciar said to the Orlando Sentinel.
For now, the agency will keep the photos for 14 days as part of validating the program’s accuracy.
Within the past year, biometric screening also has been piloted by Delta at JFK and Atlanta international airports, Lufthansa at Los Angeles International, and by JetBlue in Boston.
JetBlue introduced a facial-recognition system at Logan Airport in Boston last June