A bipartisan group of 12 senators has urged the Transportation Security Administration’s inspector general to investigate the agency’s use of facial recognition, saying it poses a significant threat to privacy and civil liberties.
Their letter comes just before one of the busiest travel periods of the year when millions of Americans are expected to pass through the nation’s airports.
“This technology will soon be in use at hundreds of major and mid-size airports without an independent evaluation of the technology’s precision or an audit of whether there are sufficient safeguards in place to protect passenger privacy,” the senators wrote.
The letter was signed by Jeffrey Merkley (D-OR), John Kennedy (R-LA), Ed Markey (D-MA), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Steve Daines (R-MT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Peter Welch (D-VT).
While the TSA’s facial recognition program is currently optional and only in a few dozen airports, the agency announced in June that it plans to expand the technology to more than 430 airports. And the senators’ letter quotes a talk given by TSA Administrator David Pekoske in 2023 in which he said “we will get to the point where we require biometrics across the board.”
“While the TSA claims facial recognition is optional, it is confusing and intimidating to opt out of TSA’s facial recognition scans, and our offices have received numerous anecdotal reports of Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) becoming belligerent when a traveler askes to opt out, or simply being unaware of that right,” the senators wrote. They added that in some airports the signage instructing flyers to step in front of a camera is prominently displayed while signs advising passengers of their right to opt out of face scan is “strategically placed in inconspicuous locations.”
In an earlier letter sent by many of the same senators to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the senators said that the TSA has not produced any evidence in response to congressional inquiries showing that the implementation of facial recognition has led to the discovery of more fraudulent identity documents. Meanwhile, the TSA has said the systems have a three percent false negative rate—how often they fail to properly match a person to their image in the database—which would equate to 68,000 failures daily if the technology was spread across all airports.
The latest letter urges the TSA’s inspector general to evaluate the agency’s facial recognition program to determine whether it’s resulted in a meaningful reduction in passenger delays, assess whether it’s prevented anyone on no-fly lists from boarding a plane, and identify how frequently it results in identity verification errors.
To opt out of a face scan at an airport, a traveler need only say that they decline facial recognition. They can then proceed normally through security by presenting an identification document, such as a driver’s license or passport.
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