The new technology installed by the TSA captures a traveler’s photo and compares it to the image on a piece of physical ID presented to a TSA agent. Use of the face-matching technology is optional and the photographs are not saved, TSA officials said.
The system compares relatively immutable characteristics in both photos, such as the distance between facial features.
“We’re supplementing the TSA officers’ actions with technology,” said Lorie Dankers, a TSA spokesperson. “Can we do it the old way? Absolutely. But when you introduce the technology, it streamlines the process for the officer.”
She said the system is generally unfazed by seemingly dramatic changes in appearance, such as weight gain or loss, wearing glasses or facial hair.
The agency says its recent screening upgrades also in many cases eliminate the need to hand over a boarding pass. The system automatically pulls up a traveler‘s flight information based on the passenger’s name and birth date, pulled from the physical ID card.
The facial matching systems have been deployed at dozens of airports across the U.S., including many of its largest. It was tested last year at airports in Baltimore, Atlanta, Phoenix and Los Angeles.
Participating in the face-matching process is optional, TSA officials say, and that’s posted on signs at each checkpoint. Travelers can stand to the side of the machine, outside the camera’s view — photographs are captured automatically when a face is detected — and tell the agent they want to opt out.
“It‘s not punitive, and you’re not going to be taken away to a private screening area,” Dankers said.
Instead, the TSA officer will check the traveler’s ID through what the agency calls its “established process” — but which amounts to the old-fashioned glance down and up.
Facial recognition technology has grown commonplace, used for logging into devices or on social media for overlaying cartoon faces onto real ones. The technology also has more sinister uses, such as creating so-called “deepfake” impersonation videos.
And studies have found facial recognition software had much higher error rates for dark-skinned faces than light-skinned, resulting in a push to diversify the datasets used to train the software.
Portland banned the use of facial recognition technology by private entities and city bureaus in 2020, but the city prohibition does not apply to other government entities.
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