It’s similar with the TSA facial recognition photos. “We delete your photo immediately” but what they don’t say is that they don’t delete the biometrics from that photo.
It's a crime that were compelled to concede our 4th Amendment rights in order to travel.
Literally not compelled in this case, the TSA signage says that the image capture is completely optional.
More generally, having your stuff screened for security to get on a commercial plane isn't a 4th amendment violation, the word "unreasonable" is right there in the amendment for a reason. You're in public in an enclosed flying object bringing your goods onto someone else's plane with 100+ strangers aboard, it is completely reasonable and necessary for the freedoms of everyone involved for the TSA to ensure that your stuff doesn't have dangerous objects aboard.
Don't forget that freedom also involves the freedom of other people to not be negatively impacted by you exercising your "freedom."
Image capture is optional, your other option is something possibly unpleasant and may make you miss your flight
That is not the other option at all. The other option is essentially just the traditional screening process.
> Standard ID credential verification is in place – Travelers who decide not to participate in the use of facial recognition technology will receive an alternative ID credential check by the TSO at the podium. The traveler will not experience any negative consequences for choosing not to participate. There is no issue and no delay with a traveler exercising their rights to not participate in the automated biometrics matching technology.
My goodness this thread is just the most annoying tinfoil hat thread I've seen all day. Y'all are spending too much time online.
> The other option is essentially just the traditional screening process.
I know that, and you know that, but you have to convince the average traveler that nothing bad will happen if they say no. In the mind of the average traveler, it’s safer to just say “okay” to whatever the TSA wants. There needs to be some kind of neutral ombudsman to placate travelers’ fears of reprisal for opting to preserve their rights.
No, the TSA actively threatens you with unspecified additional hassle/delay if you express a desire to opt out.
They are also running facial recognition on all of those round just-above-eye-level camera pods all up and down the concourse.
It's not; I flew every week for months, and across ALL airports, I got an indifferent "OK" from the TSA agent, and was waved along.
Depends on the type of travel right? I took Amtrak weekly for several years and never even had to show ID.
Did this change? Last time I tried to take them (ten+ years ago, because my license expired) they refused my ticket purchase because my id was expired.
Same with drivers licenses and passports having a photo requirement too
The TSA photos are worse. They use a stereoscopic camera to take a 3d image of your head, which makes facial recognition up to 10x more accurate.
You can opt out, just say you do (and preferably cover the camera with your hat or bag)
WiFi 7 Sensing is bringing similar functionality to consumer routers and many laptops, with the bonus of passing through walls.
>drivers licenses and passports having a photo requirement too
You're free to take the bus, or hire a chauffeur. A private pilots license doesn't have any pictures either.
For better or worse, we didn’t have to make such hard choices for the first 80 years of aviation. And Greyhound etc require photo ID these days as well
A US pilot certificate itself does not include a photo, but you must have a photo ID to use it. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-61/section-61.3#p...
That’s not a freedom. That’s a restriction that reduces the amount of choices you have for potentially worse ones.
It literally says right on the facial recognition sign that you're free to opt out, just let the TSA employee know
The TSA is - objectively, by their own audits - complete security theater. Why bother to defend them, exactly?
Also, the spirit of the 4th Amendment is most certainly not "here, this is the easy way!" (yes, we are conducting mass surveillance but you can sort of opt out of one piece of it by going through a manual process over here that we will make you feel like you are burdening us by requesting)
correcting disinformation isn't defending something. do you want to live in a world where we dislike someone and so we just make up random terrible things about them that aren't true, and it's fine and encouraged because they're someone we dislike, and people aren't allowed to say "hey that's not actually true, at all"
Yup,people are really good about it in my experience too. I just stand off to the side of the camera, and say "no biometrics please". They take a minute to check my documents and it's done. Try it.
I trust the TSA agents brain to not get hacked in the next 24 hours, a database run by them, not so much.
The purpose is to gather biometric data on people that will be used for future surveillance in our incipient fascist state with the implicit statement that opting out is suspicious and will lead to greater scrutiny.
Amtrak and Greyhound do not require those biometrics, nor does renting a car and driving (or driving your own).
Some of us want to be able to cross the country in an afternoon, and not have to spend days on a slow, uncomfortable train to make the same trip. I don't think that's unreasonable.
Certainly not unreasonable. But it does require you to commission your own transport subject to the rules that that private entity seeks to impose. Public entities which indiscriminately service residents and visitors of a given territory would obviate this requirement. But if you're in the US, good luck convincing taxpayers to agree to pay for that.
> subject to the rules that that private entity seeks to impose.
It's not the private entity taking a 3D face scan, nor are they necessarily wanting for that scan to be taken. It's federal laws and regulations being done by federal agents in spaces controlled by the federal government.
TSA is not a government organization. Neither is Boeing nor any of the airline carriers.
TSA is absolutely a government organization, it's a part of the Department of Homeland Security. It was created by an act of Congress, the Aviation and Transportation Security Act. You might as well argue the IRS or FBI or the US Marshalls aren't a government organization. What about absolutely absurd thing to suggest.
> The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that has authority over the security of transportation systems within and connecting to the United States.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Admi...
Private and charter aviation exists and is free from those constraints.
Some of us are not billionaires.
Freedom has never been free.
You don't have to be to fly charter or private.
You can also walk. Lovers of freedom can walk from Manhattan to LA in 40-50 days. Of course if you look “wrong”, you’ll probably get rounded up in some flyover town.
I wonder what the chances of surviving that trip is, based on walking pedestrian fatalities on highways.
Depends on where you walk the US is amazingly poorly situated for long walks outside of major cities. Sidewalks disappear first then lighting then one is liable to run into major stretches with no safe affordance for walking whatsoever where one is either inches from cars or in a ditch.