Delta Airlines Introducing Facial Recognition For Travelers

By Nicholas West

The desire for security, efficiency and convenience is a narrative that continues to incrementally condition the population to accept the erosion of privacy and civil liberties on a number of fronts. The modern-day airport can certainly test the patience of even the most saintly, so it’s somewhat understandable that people have come to hope for anything that promises to deliver them to the exit as rapidly as possible, and preferably with the least amount of contact with airport personnel.

The concurrent fear surrounding terrorists and immigrants (apparently understood now to be one and the same) further greases the slippery slope as we accelerate to a full-on police state where “papers please” is set to be replaced by a less-intrusive biometric scan. It appears that, once again, what many people believed would be restricted to border control measures for specific groups of people is set to trickle down to any and all of the traveling public.

Delta Airlines is announcing that beginning as soon as this summer, Minneapolis-St. Paul airport will have automated baggage kiosks for “priority customers” that will first scan a traveler’s passport, then their face in order to match identity to checked luggage. It is being promoted as a pilot program that Delta is seeking customer feedback for in the hope that it can be rolled out more widely in the future. This move is part and parcel of what is quickly becoming global in scope.

I reported back in January that Australia was seeking to become the first nation to implement biometric identification for all airports nationwide. And, as correctly noted by The Verge, other U.S. states and nations have begun their own programs with varying degrees of scale:

CBP [U.S. Customs and Border Protection – Ed.] began testing facial recognition systems at Dulles Airport in 2015, then expanded the tests to New York’s JFK Airport last year. Face-reading check-in kiosks will be appearing at Ottawa International Airport this spring, and British Airways is rolling out a similar system at London’s Heathrow Airport, comparing faces captured at security screenings with a separate capture at the boarding gate.

Source: The Verge

Naturally, Delta is ensuring that data and images will be limited and not retained, but at this point given the fact that naked images of travelers weren’t even properly protected by the TSA, we shouldn’t be so naive to think that leaks and/or abuses won’t occur. There could be limited hope that perhaps a private company would take better care of its customers than the government offers its citizens these days, but even that has been largely erased as story after story shows airlines treating people literally worse than cattle in some instances.

Whereas this limited initiative might be overlooked as insignificant in the grand scheme of surveillance and privacy violations, we would do well to remember how all of this started: incrementally. This should be viewed as an integral part of helping to lay the foundation of a much larger initiative to turn people into digital organisms with virtual papers. The political will is there, the databases exist, and the technology is being rolled out across every meaningful area of human activity.  Writer for The Verge, Andrew J. Hawkins, hits the nail on the head when he states:

And as more people become more comfortable (or at least tolerant) with the idea that privacy doesn’t carry much weight at US airports, the use of these types of scanning processes is likely to grow more frequent.

Are you comfortable? Are you tolerant?

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Nicholas West writes for ActivistPost.com. He also writes for Counter Markets agorist newsletter.

This article may be freely republished in part or in full with author attribution and source link.

Hat Tip: MassPrivateI


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4 Comments on "Delta Airlines Introducing Facial Recognition For Travelers"

  1. Such a terrible idea. Aside from hacking there are so many faces that are similar & so many chances for a mistake & iris scans can damage your vision. I rarely ever fly anymore. Can’t even get on a train, bus or go into a federal building anymore without your papers please. Sickening.

  2. Grace by Faith on yt | May 19, 2017 at 10:24 am |

    Excellent report! Here’s how to stop them fast in their facially recognized tracks. So everything we do with commerce is a contract, right? And everything the government tries to get us to do only has authority by our consent, an agreement or stipulation of some sort, our silence being consent. But if everything’s a contract to them then we should tell them we know that all contracts are negotiable on both sides, that’s what makes them a contract, both sides must equally benefit.

    So what we do is, we charge them a fee for scanning and then using our likenesses, say, $1,000,000 a pop, after all, our likenesses belong exclusively to us (the government ONLY owns the trust account they created in our names) and they will be making the profit from them. Of course they can refuse our counter-offer, but then they just lost their consent to do it to us which is the goal in the first place.

    When we contract with the government or any business, by definition, contracts must benefit both sides equally or they become “unconscionable” or null at the get-go, hence void. So in order to balance out this one-sidedness with this facial recognition software, we must receive some sort of benefit, and they’d be very hard pressed to even try to prove they’re providing security for us against some unknown entity. Not to mention trying to prove our personal security is in danger without it, in fact, it can’t be done unless they can drag a terrorist in front of us who has a note saying they’re going to hurt us personally.

    They can’t use theory or fake news history as evidence we’re in danger. LOL So where’s OUR benefit? There is none at all, and they know it, and that’s why we need to request it, or tell them, no thanks, I don’t wish to change my contract with you at this time, but you’ve already contracted with me to fly me from A to B, so I’ll be boarding now. 😉 Their lawyers wee heads would spin and they’d lose in court, even in their kangaroo courts, because they MUST follow protocol and code, they can’t operate without doing so.

    Let’s face it (pun intended), we all know there is very little personal danger to traveling and it’s all created by them to give us the appearance of danger (much like their “color of law” fraud). They operate on very specific corporate protocols and policies, and they must abide by them, but we can do the same thing back to them using their own weapon against us against them, and that’s the most empowering truth of them all.

    • Down the road, this will be mandatory. Submit to biometrics or don’t fly. Wait for it. Expect it.

      • Grace by Faith on yt | May 21, 2017 at 7:21 am |

        Absolutely agreed! And this whole immobilization of the population is part and parcel of the UN’s Agenda 2030, where we are herded into megacities in order to get basic needs like food, water and/or utilities where we will work where we live and use public transportation and bikes to get around, which means the elderly, infirm, disabled and families with small children won’t go anywhere. Our cars, of course, will be eliminated for some stupid CO2 or terrorism excuse (they’re pushing the terrorism by car agenda HARD right now). There are planning maps we can find right now where 75% of our land will be cordoned off for wildlife preserves and we will be prohibited from stepping foot there (so wildlife have more privileges than we do). Los Angeles has just approved building 30′ walls with police watchtowers on major freeways, and of course the wall between Mexico and the US is not to keep Mexicans out because they’re already all here that want to be here, but to keep us in. What a racket, and the sheep just follow the shepherd not even noticing it’s not even trying to hide anymore the fact that it’s really a wolf.

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