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DHS Pushing to Facial Recognition Tech for Every Airline Passenger Within 4 Years

The move is Orwellian at best and authoritarian at its worst.

As Americans, we have a right to our privacy that can be easily interpreted as a right to protect it as well.

In the Bill of Rights we have the Fourth Amendment protecting us from “unlawful search and seizure”, the gist of which is that the police and the government can’t just show up looking around, trying to see if maybe you committed a crime they could arrest you for.

It’s why we have search warrants, in short.

And just as the Fourth Amendment protects us, there should be a reasonable expectation that we cannot be otherwise ensnared by law enforcement in a similarly haphazard fashion.  This is precisely the ethos that has many concerned about the latest maneuver from the Department of Homeland Security.

Lawmakers and civil liberties advocates are calling on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to halt plans to begin using facial recognition technology on nearly all departing air passengers within the next four years.

The agency’s plan has reignited the fight over the sensitive technology. Critics say facial recognition technology is not ready for large-scale deployment and that DHS has failed to establish specific rules to prevent abuses and policies for handling the collected data.

“The Department of Homeland Security is plowing ahead with its program to scan travelers’ faces, and it’s doing so in absence of adequate safeguards against privacy invasions, data breaches, and racial bias,” Sen.Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement to The Hill. “Homeland Security should change course and stop its deployment of facial recognition technology until it meets that standard.”
The move is Orwellian at best and authoritarian at its worst.
We can only hope that the Department of Homeland Security comes to their senses.  And soon.

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