Your hot girl walk through TSA could be looking a lot different soon

Yesterday, the TSA unveiled a new pilot program that incorporates facial recognition technology into 16 of America’s largest airports, as part of an effort to enhance security and reduce overall passenger wait times.

👤 Here’s how it works: Passengers at each of the major airports – including those in Atlanta, D.C., Denver, Detroit, LA, Las Vegas, Miami, and Phoenix – will walk up to an airport security checkpoint, slip an ID card into a slot, and look into a camera on top of a small screen.

• Once the passenger’s face-scan is successfully compared to their ID and a government database of past images (e.g., previous driver’s licenses or passport photos), the screen flashes “Photo Complete,” and the passenger is good to walk through to the body-scan section.
• The service is voluntary, with passengers able to opt-out and have their ID checked by a human. It’s also not active at every TSA checkpoint.

The TSA says the goal of its facial recognition program is to improve the accuracy of identity verification and keep America’s ~2.4 million daily airline passengers moving through checkpoints smoothly; the new program reportedly cuts the average time to verify each passengers’ identity from around half-a-minute to just two or three seconds.

✋ Yes, but: Some lawmakers and privacy advocates have raised concerns about how the TSA’s biometric data is collected, who has access to it, and what happens if it gets hacked. In February, a group of five senators sent a letter to the TSA demanding the agency halt its facial recognition program.