Erik Learned-Miller was flying from Hartford, Connecticut, to a conference in Seoul, South Korea, last year when he noticed cameras scanning his face at the airport. A U.S. government agency was using facial recognition to identify him, he said.
High-tech border security raises privacy concerns
“I was a little apprehensive,” Learned-Miller, a computer science professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who studies facial recognition technology, said in a telephone interview. “It’s a concern that my face is going to end up in a database that’s being used by another government agency.”
Learned-Miller is one of a growing number of travelers subjected to high-tech identification and data searches at U.S. borders. Some civil rights experts say the use of such technologies threatens privacy.
Earlier this year, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that every pedestrian entering the country from Mexico will soon be identified using biometric facial comparison technology at the Brownsville Port of Entry. Previously, CBP officials said the agency would use facial recognition to identify every traveler entering the country by 2025. In July, the Department of Homeland Security detailed the tools it can now use to extract a phone’s data, including location history, social media information, photos and videos.
