Miami International Airport Wants to Scan Your Face

Adapted from Miami New Times, 17 Aug 2023

Amid pressure from lawmakers to ramp up airport security post-9/11, facial recognition
technology has made its way into dozens of airports across the United States and Puerto Rico
in recent years. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) plans to use it in more than
400 airports over the next few years.
5 In 2018, the technology was introduced at MIA by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
to screen passengers arriving from international destinations. In May 2022, the Miami-Dade
County Board of County Commissioners approved a $9.1 million contract for the county
aviation department's project to install facial screening technology at MIA’s gates to scan
departing international travelers. The airport started to deploy the equipment around October
10 2022.

U.S. citizens have the ability to opt out of the face-scanning process and instead submit to a
manual review of their travel documents. However, according to CBP, all non-US citizens are
required to go through the biometric identification process.
15
"CBP will ensure that all legal and privacy requirements are met," the agency says.

While touted as a way to hasten the air travel experience, facial recognition software is highly
controversial, with some cities like San Francisco banning the use of the technology by police
20 and other government agencies. As with other new technologies, it faces skepticism for
potential misuse, data storage implications, and prospective bias in the screening process.

In February, following TSA's expansion of the technology into some of the nation's largest
airports, U.S. senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Ed Markey, and Jeffrey
25 Merkley sent a letter to the agency demanding that it halt the program.

The senators outline several concerns in the letter, writing that not only could the data gleaned
wind up in the hands of private corporations or bad actors, but that the technology could also
exacerbate racial discrimination during screening. They note a 2019 study from the National
30 Institute of Standards and Technology, which found Asian and African American people were
far more likely to be misidentified by facial recognition technology than white men.
They also warned that TSA's data has the potential to be hacked, which already happened
once before in 2019.

35 "Increasing biometric surveillance of Americans by the government represents a risk to civil

liberties and privacy rights," the letter reads.