The use of biometric technology is becoming more widespread at Airport Near me around the globe including the United States, changing how passengers navigate them from luggage check to aircraft boarding.
Travellers poured through Terminal C’s external doors at La Guardia Airport on a recent Thursday morning in Queens. As they checked their baggage and proceeded to the security screening lines, a few seemed sleepy-eyed, with the majority gripping their briefcases.
Up until a few people approached a nearly empty queue, everything was going as normal. A security guard waited by as each of them made their way to a kiosk that had an iPad attached to it so that their pictures could be taken. Each passenger’s picture was quickly compared to a picture in a government database, allowing them to pass security and enter the more intricate part of the airport. There’s no need for a physical ID or boarding permit.
Even though they had already chosen to participate in the programme, some travellers still presented identification, but the officer rejected it.
This facial recognition software passenger screening, which was made available to a select group of passengers at La Guardia by Delta Air Lines and the Transportation Security Administration, is just one illustration of how biometric technology—which makes use of a person’s distinct physical identifiers, such as their face or fingerprints—promises to revolutionise air travel.
Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry researcher at Atmosphere Research, believes that this year may mark the “tipping point” for the widespread adoption of biometrics in air travel. In the near future, tedious airport procedures like going through security, dropping off your bags, and even boarding an aircraft could just need your face, “helping to reduce waiting times and stress for travellers,” according to Mr. Harteveldt.
Both government organisations in charge of aviation security and big airlines in the US have made significant investments in face recognition technology. International airports implementing biometric-enabled automated gates and self-service kiosks for immigration and customs are becoming more and more common.
According to experts, the deployment of this technology may result in improved passenger processing times and security. However, it also brings up ethical and privacy issues.
Many concerns have been raised about the use of biometrics at airports, according to Dr. Morgan Klaus Scheuerman, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Colorado who specialises in the ethics of digital identity and artificial intelligence: How are the systems assessed and trained? Would giving up be seen as a warning sign? What happens if the papers you have don’t look the way you do now?
Positive attitude on technology in the United States and Coming Soon to an Airport Near me
The TSA is the primary government organisation responsible for guaranteeing the safety of the hundreds of millions of travellers who use flights every year. It has over 50,000 agents stationed at roughly 430 airports around the country. Applicants for the TSA PreCheck programme, which provides faster security screening at more than 200 domestic airports, must be deemed “low-risk” travellers. While biometric verification provided by Clear, a private screening business, and PreCheck, which requires an in-person appointment for the presentation of documentation and fingerprinting, have contributed to a reduction in screening wait times, passengers often have to wait in lengthy lines to reach their gates.
Since 2019, the T.S.A. has conducted experiments using face recognition technology. Currently, around thirty additional airports, including Los Angeles and Denver International Airports, provide screening verification that begins with a traveller picture. After that, a physical scan of a driver’s licence or passport is compared to the picture using face recognition software. The agency claims that soon after, the picture is removed. According to the organisation, in the next years, over 400 additional airports will provide this procedure, which travellers may choose not to participate in.
T.S.A. executive director Melissa Conley, who is in charge of checkpoint technologies, said that biometric technology matches faces more quickly and precisely than human agents.
People struggle to fit faces together. Everyone knows that, Ms. Conley said. “Machines are not fatigued.”
Passengers must still provide their IDs throughout the procedure. However, Delta’s trial programme, Delta Digital ID, modifies that.
PreCheck travellers may use their faces at La Guardia, John F. Kennedy International Airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and four additional airports in place of boarding cards and identification when using Delta Digital ID.
According to Greg Forbes, Delta’s managing director of airport experience, facial recognition cuts the time it takes to drop off bags by more than a minute, to around 30 seconds, and it also shortens the time it takes for security checks, from 25 to about 10 seconds. Even though it’s a “simple change,” Mr Forbes said, the time savings mount up and make the queue substantially speedier.
“I believe that Digital ID could be beneficial anywhere that PreCheck is in place,” Mr. Forbes said.
For example, American Airlines passengers may use their faces to get through PreCheck security at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and to access the airline’s lounge at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. Other airlines have started similar tests for PreCheck passengers. At bag drop stations at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, United Airlines allows PreCheck passengers to use their faces. The airline plans to introduce similar programme to Los Angeles International Airport in March.
Additionally, Alaska Airlines intends to invest $2.5 billion in enhancements over the next three years, including the installation of new bag drop machines in Anchorage, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle. The traveler’s ID will be scanned by a machine, which will then compare it to a picture and scan the printed luggage tags. In May, Portland will welcome the new system, which is intended to expedite the bag tagging and dropping procedure for visitors from eight minutes to less than five minutes.
The timing seemed appropriate for Alaska, according to senior vice president of innovation and marketing Charu Jain, because of advancements in technology and growing customer comfort with face recognition.
In the boundaries
Up until now, the fastest-growing use of face recognition technology at US airports has been in entry and departure security procedures.
The increase is the result of a 2001 legislative requirement that was put into place after the events of 9/11 and called for the establishment of a system that would enable all travellers entering and leaving the United States to be recognised via the use of biometric technology.
The biometric technology for individuals entering the United States is in place and was scanned at airports last year for 113 million admissions. It is under the control of the Customs and Border Protection department. The C.B.P. hopes to cover all airports with international departures by 2026. Currently, the system is accessible at 49 airports for travellers departing the country.
Entry by biometrics is required for foreign nationals. However, although C.B.P. is working to fully operationalize the system, biometric exit is now optional for these travellers. Americans may opt out of the biometric procedure at any border by requesting a manual ID check.
Although the approach intends to increase security, Diane Sabatino, CBP’s acting executive assistant commissioner for field operations, recognised growing privacy concerns. She claimed that although pictures of foreign nationals are kept for up to 75 years, pictures of American people captured during the procedure are erased after 12 hours.
She said, “We are not searching through the crowd for people.” “There’s definitely a privacy concern. We won’t ever urge them to give up their privacy in the sake of convenience.
According to Airport Near me officials, Miami International Airport has one of the “largest deployments” of biometrics in the nation and was the second busiest airport in the US for foreign travellers last year. According to Maurice Jenkins, chief innovation officer of the Miami-Dade Aviation Department, the airport has installed technology for departing passengers at 74 out of 134 gates in collaboration with SITA, a global provider of information technology for the aviation industry. By the end of the year, the airport plans to cover the remaining gates.
Although the $9 million deal with SITA is expensive, Mr. Jenkins said that the new technology was improving overall airport operations efficiency, such as the number of gate agents verifying documentation.
Travelling abroad without a document
Experts predict that face recognition will be used for every aspect of travelling through airports in the future, including checking bags, boarding, accessing lounges, and making purchases at airport retail establishments. It may be so efficient that security checkpoints are removed and security “tunnels” that travellers pass through while having their identities verified are installed in their place.
Dr. Sheldon Jacobson, an aviation security researcher and professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said, “This is the future.”
In a recent study conducted by SITA, 292 airlines and 382 airports worldwide, it was found that 90% of airports are presently investing in biometric identification technology, and 70% of airlines worldwide plan to utilise some kind of biometric identification by 2026.
At several airports overseas, more extensive experimentation has already been implemented. Changi Airport in Singapore plans to eliminate the need for passports for departures later this year; all travellers, regardless of country, will be able to use this method. Travellers at Germany’s Frankfurt Airport may now use their faces for everything from check-in to boarding. The airport is equipping all airlines with biometric technology by installing it at both of its terminals.
According to a survey published last month by the U.S. Travel Association and the international market research firm Euromonitor, 74 airports in China—or 86% of the nation’s international airports—have biometric equipment installed. Travellers may utilise face recognition at Beijing Capital International Airport, the busiest Airport Near me in the nation, for the whole of their trip, including paying for goods at duty-free stores.
However, just roughly 36% of international airports in the US have biometric capability, according to the survey.
According to Kevin McAleenan, the CEO of Pangiam, a travel technology business, and a former acting secretary of the US Department of Homeland Security, there are a number of reasons why adoption in the nation is trailing behind. In short, there are several airports in the United States, and the immigration outflow procedure is distinct from other countries.
In many foreign airports, immigration is managed by the government, which makes it possible for these airports to have a government-installed biometric system.
Airlines in the United States verify the identity of departing passengers by using C.B.P. passenger data.
worries about governmental monitoring
The usage of biometrics has already permeated everyday existence. Individuals use their faces to unlock their phones. At Whole Foods, customers may pay with their hands for their goods.
However, others argue that despite the technology’s ease of use, there is a significant risk of misuse, ranging from unrestricted monitoring to inadvertent consequences such as sustaining prejudice based on race and gender.
The American Civil Liberties Union’s senior policy counsel for privacy and technology, Cody Venzke, expressed concern about a “nuclear scenario” and said that the government had not yet shown the need of face recognition technology at airports.
He said that “the foundation for a really robust and widespread government surveillance and tracking network” may be facial recognition technology.
“It could be utilised to automatically and covertly follow you around as you go about your day, and build an extremely comprehensive mosaic about every aspect of your life,” Mr. Venzke said.
The Traveller Privacy Protection Act is a legislative measure that the A.C.L.U. supports that was submitted in November of last year. The measure would end the TSA’s current face recognition programme and need legislative approval for it to be restarted, citing security and racial discrimination issues.
A halt to the TSA’s biometrics initiatives, according to Ms. Conley, would “take us back years.”
Facial recognition has already proven to be a trustworthy tool for certain travellers. On a recent afternoon at J.F.K., Brad Mossholder, 45, bypassed a dozen travellers in the PreCheck lane by using Delta’s Digital ID line to speed through the security screening at Terminal 4.
He was travelling often for work and had previously utilised face recognition technology. He was travelling from his home in New York to San Diego for his job in corporate retail. Mr. Mossholder said that generally, the procedure is simpler and quicker, and he wasn’t concerned about privacy.
He said, “To be honest, my picture is on a million social media platforms, including LinkedIn.” “You could see a picture of me if you really wanted to.”
