The Nightmare Of Airport Facial Recognition

by Gary Leff

News notes from around the interweb:

  • The nightmare of airport facial recognition. It’s going to be turned into a law enforcement tool, and airlines will get to use your biometric data.

    Driving the dystopian trend called out in the ACLU white paper is the malign convergence of interest between governments that want to use facial recognition and other techniques of compelled and automated identification for surveillance and control of travelers’ movements, and airlines, airports, and other businesses that want to share use of the same identification systems and data for business process automation and commercial tracking and profiling of travel customers.

  • 97% of biggest airports fail cybersecurity test yet the TSA is out there looking at your shoes and shampoo.

  • The U.K. government is requiring Ryanair to pull an ad but I thought Brexit was about freedom from E.U. over-regulation…?

  • United, American and Alaska shopping portal bonuses

  • United recently cut Cleveland – Washington National to have slots for their ramped up DC-Newark shuttle, and also cut Cleveland – LaGuardia. American is adding capacity to both markets.

  • All of Delta’s 777s now have their new business class with doors. (And 777’s in coach are 9-abreast while competitors like American and United cram in 10-across.)

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. The UK government’s attack on Ryanair makes me glad that the First Amendment protects most commercial speech in the USA. Yes, on many fronts, the Ryanair ad is dumb — and I think it’s certainly dumb to fly Ryanair to “save the planet.” But not everyone feels that way. And the ad isn’t untruthful: it’s certainly more truthful than most political ads I see. If a company wants to market to the Religious Green movement, let them do so.

  2. @chopsticks – go back and research Constitutional law. Freedom of speech only means the government can’t put you in jail for your speech (with certain limitations). It doesn’t mean there aren’t consequences of speech or that the government can LIMIT speech that it believes is false or misleading by businesses – this is done all the time by the FDA with respect to claims on supplements and other medical health matters. US could block an ad like this just like the UK if they felt it was misleading or untrue (or for a number of other reasons)

    Amazes me how many people mention “freedom of speech” with absolutely no understanding what it really means

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