Facial Recognition at Logan Airport

May 18, 2023

The Associated Press reports that the TSA is testing facial recognition at Logan Airport’s Terminal A. Instead of handing your identification to a TSA worker you will place it on a kiosk and it will use a camera to compare the photo on your ID with your photo taken from a camera. They are not yet storing photos so you do not have to take your ID out, but that may be coming soon.

Why It Matters

Proponents of the new technology say it is inevitable and will speed up the check-in process. Critics are worried that it is another way the government can invade our privacy, and that the algorithms might not work well for all ethnic groups.

My Skepticism

If you have ever been in a self-checkout line at a store or seen the confusion of new folks at Global Entry kiosks that use facial recognition, you quickly can imagine why this will slow lines down. The TSA will continue to have a person present while it tests this technology, but the real test is whether it works as seamlessly as FaceID on your phone and can remove the need for a person in most cases.

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This work by Matt Zagaja is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.