You can opt out of airport face scans

I opted out at Boston International Airport. It involved arguing with the TSA for about 5 minutes while holding up a 150 person line. Then the supervisor came over, told me that I "was required to have to have my photo taken" and opting out consisted of checking a box in the software to not save my photo. My alternative was to not get on the flight.

The whole idea of opting out is a scam. They are 100% planning to force mandatory facial recognition on the general public.

It's such a challenge coming up against this stuff. So many people will (understandably) just accept it and go along with it. Surveillance is normalised. Data breaches of our most sensitive data are normalised. Companies simply giving all this sensitive data to law enforcement is normalised. Fighting back is hard if it even occurs to you that you can and should.

My husband's workplace tried to force him to enrol in biometrics along with the rest of his company. It was just for doing timesheets. We'd have fought it if it were for identity verification and security as well, but no, it was just for bloody timesheets. Giving away immutable biometric data to a crappy third party company who has data breaches every six months just for bloody timesheets just felt extraordinarily ridiculous and audacious. My husband did encourage his colleagues to consider not signing it but nobody gave it much thought (or was worried about being fired).

We recently needed to verify our identities to a financial institution and they pushed hard to use a (different) third party biometrics system instead of the good ol fashioned just not doing that. We needed to provide them with all the normal ID documentation anyway. Why the hell would we sign up for biometrics on top of that?

I suppose my point is that people generally choose the path of least resistance (understandably). Turning the tides on biometrics garbage being normalised, the default, and probably the only way in the future is something I can't really see happening.

Flying back to the US earlier this year in June, I declined to have my face scanned. The agent was rude and aggressive because I “didn’t tell him I wanted to opt out before he started.”

He went overboard in terms of harassment and intimidation but he did not win. Fuck that guy.

Also who cares whether the photo is immediately deleted? The metrics are what matter and those are kept.

I'll be honest, I don't mind if the federal government has my face information. I already have a passport and a driver's license, I live here, I pay taxes, the federal government already has all my information.

My issue is if any private company gets to use it or store it. I will never join Clear and I tell everyone I meet not to trust them.

One interesting thing, in Arizona to get a "Real ID" drivers license that you can use in for flights, they make you use a face scanning app that runs on your cell phone. So sometimes they're getting the face scan done before you even go to the airport. I wonder if they can scan it at the airport no matter what, and just compare you to previous face scans? Hard to tell when these things actually happen.

I was flying home from dallas a few months back. They had a giant sign in the security line that said (maybe not verbatim) - We're trying out a new face recognition security system. This is completely optional. If you don't want to participate, just tell the agent "I'd like to opt out".

I get to the front of the line, tell the lady "I'd like to opt out" - she looks at me like I was speaking Algonquin. So I repeat "I'd like to opt out". Her - "What are you talking about??". So I point to the sign sitting two feet away from her and say "your sign says the face scan is optional and I can opt out???"

"Just say you want a pat down, we don't know what you're saying".

To say their training on this being "optional" is lacking is quite the understatement... You have signs telling people what to tell the agent, verbatim, and the agent acts like they have no idea what you're talking about... speaking of big government at its finest...

I used to opt out of everything, and get searched manually but now I have given up. I applied for clear, I let them take my pic, I do everything because at this point I know they already know everything about me. It's sad, it's 1984-come-to-fruition, but I am too old and tired to keep tilting at windmills.

They've won.

When did we start calling this "face scanning"?

Isn't it just literally taking a photo, like any digital camera?

To me "scanning" implies a 3D point cloud. Apple's TrueDepth camera, with a projected dot cloud, that it uses for Face ID -- that's scanning, as opposed to just a photo.

Are airports actually performing 3D scans now?

Or are they still just normal digital cameras, but people are calling it "scanning" because they want it to sound scarier than "photos"?

And I do, every time! They don't really care, although some make a half-hearted pitch about how the image gets deleted right away.

Interesting read, I (a Norwegian citizen) traveled to the US (OSL -> CPH -> SFO and back) in July and was surprised by some parts of the procedures at the airport. Some notable parts of my experience:

- There is no longer the paper form you filled out on the plane/prior to customs. You fill out online forms (visa or ESTA in my case) months before you travel.

- Upon arrival customs and immigration took my fingerprints and photo. My passport and ESTA were in order and I have traveled to the US several times before (and well, I am a privileged ethnicity from western Europe), and the agent didn't do any questioning about purpose of travel, accommodation, etc this time. That has happened to me on previous trips though. This type of questioning always makes me feel uncomfortable and afraid to say something wrong, so that was a relief. I would certainly not begin to argue with the agent about opting out of the biometrics at this stage.

- My checked bags were not inspected by customs. On a previous US trip I did find a notice that the bag had been inspected.

- On departure, at the TSA bag check there were the full body scanners you step into and raise your hands. I didn't see any information about opting out anywhere, though I wasn't actively searching for it. There was nothing in particular that made me consider that my face was being scanned in detail here.

- At the gate I was surprised that boarding check was via facecam. This was the first time I have seen this and I had not considered that my pictures from before could be used this way. Everywhere else and all other times I have traveled you board with the barcode/QR on the boarding card and without any ID check.

So in my experience (as an admittedly privileged traveler) the system is optimized for efficiency and "convenience", but certainly not for privacy. There isn't much information to find about what you must do and what you are able to opt out of. Just do the same thing as the person in front of you in the line, ad infinitum. I know I should be more concerned about privacy in general, but the stress of travel and anxiety about doing something "wrong" and somehow getting in trouble with these agencies make me (and probably most others) accept these things.

These scans are likely to be property of a dictator. Please prepare for that.

If you opt out, you can't use automated immigration and boarding systems at many airports. At Singapore's Changi, for example, their process for entering and exiting the country is incredible, fully automated (unless the system determines you need further verification by a human, but this still saves more time than only human verification for everyone). This is the same for boarding, you scan your boarding pass and it verifies your picture with a camera, then you just get on the plane.

What's funny is other (possibly less trustable) countries will have your scan anyway... try "opting" out of the face scan when you arrive in India.

Those that leaked because of the CBP’s poor security practices? [0]

I really can’t wait for tomorrow’s hackers using the next generation of Sora to make fake video of me doing god knows what [1] thanks to the CBP’s next data leak.

And I can’t opt out, because I’m an evil foreign national. Or rather I can; it just means giving up on travelling to or through the US.

[0]: https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2020-09/O...

[1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/04/asia/deepfake-cfo-scam-ho...

I saw these installed at a couple airports I was at recently. I opted out myself, but to my horror, 100% of the line, except for me, simply agreed to the facial scan. Even though there are signs in the security line talking about how the new process is a trial with the option to opt out, the TSA agent simply said “step up to the camera” and everyone complied. It felt like I was watching dystopia forming live because people are too ready to accept authority.

If a few educated people on hacker news opt out, it means nothing. The practice of invasive biometric scanning will be normalized by the masses who just comply. Just like with other existing security procedures. Soon the scans will be mandatory but also everywhere else in society. I’m not sure what a good defense is against this.

I noticed last year that they’d simply say “photo” at the time they were to take it. Not, would you like to? (Because you’d say no)… nor you must. It’s mildly awkward, so they must’ve been trained explicitly to just say “photo” which is not a question or a command.

The Vox article refers to an Algorithmic Justice League[1] article which footnotes the TSA article that says you can opt out [2]. I have to fly next week and if I have the guts to try this I'll definitely have the TSA article handy, not, er, the Vox article.

[1] https://www.ajl.org/campaigns/fly

[2] https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/factsheets/facial-recognition...

But are you guaranteed this opt out will not be used against you in future circumstances?

I have a Passport, Global Entry and Pre Check. The digital ID and face scanning in general has actually been a pretty positive improvement. They already have the data anyways, might as well skip the showing my id nonsense.

That said I do think it should be default opt-out.

Wondering if this is a thing in Europe too? I did not know you could opt-out of this in the US but every time I go through one of those machines I always wonder where that data is stored, how long it is kept around and why.

I have never _even once_ gone through the TSA naked scanner since they were put in after 9/11.

A pat down is invasive, but the pat down is ephemeral by its own nature.

Just wait until the TSA announces they trained an AI model on sorted naked images.

Last time I opted out of facial recognition when re-entering the US, I got put through an additional baggage and security scan with my passport literally locked in a box.

I opt-in to everything. Global Entry, Pre, Clear Plus, Face Scan, uploaded my genome and medical data. I shall be the experiment. If you read on the Internet about "Guy who uploaded all his data gets what was coming" you'll know I did the wrong thing. But so far, so good. The stuff I didn't upload is in publicly available databases too. SSN etc. hahaha

I think they (Palantir, Five Eyes, etc) already have everything on you and the face scan is just an added touch. You can opt out but then you’re just part of a much smaller subset that’s even easier to keep track of.

You can also opt out of the cylindrical x-ray.

The correct incantation is: "I would like to opt out of the millimeter wave."

If you do this, then someone of the same gender will run their gloved hands over (somewhat sensitive) areas of your body, then test the gloves for explosive residue.

At my age, I probably shouldn't care about any of this, but I don't like needless x-rays.

Thank you for reminding me to renew my ESTA for this year.

Have they been scanning the faces of minors? Toddlers? Do parents need to opt out for them separately?

I misread the title at first. "Why would you opt out of a font?"

I'm more bothered by the fact that customs agents can demand people unlock their phones [0].

The government already has your picture, but letting them copy device data over is a much more significant invasion of privacy

Also kind of pointless too, because anyone with something actually important could just encrypt it, upload it somewhere, and wipe the device. Good luck putting the packets through customs

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/18/phone-d...

have been opting out for a while, including at Boston, never had an issue.

I seem to recall one of the TSA screening lines at JFK had a sign indicating that one could opt out. I’m disappointed if airports do not have similar signage.

Why do people want to opt out? This perplexes me as “the government” already has scans of your face. So these devices aren’t used to collect data.

I’m also perplexed when my parent won’t give the State department their SSN, but received SSN benefits, and Medicare, and pays taxes to the IRS. They say they don’t want “the government” to have their data, but oddly think the government doesn’t already have a dossier on them.

I love the scans as they speed up security. I traveled recently, internationally to and from the US and it was nice to just scan my face and show my passport and not need to scan my qrcode boarding pass.