Myth: Airlines will keep passengers’ identities and
facial data on-file.
In this age of increasingly
frequent data breaches, airlines don’t want
to store any more personally identifiable information (PII) than they
absolutely have to, lest they incur additional IT burden, expenses and
liability.
In the example given
above, when you visit the United States, the CPB captures your facial image on
arrival as part of admitting you into the country. These images are then used
to compare to your face when you depart.
Myth: Facial recognition replaces current security
measures.
Facial recognition
doesn’t mean secure documents will disappear. Digital passports, traditional IDs
and even those stored on mobile devices will still be heavily involved in the traveller
verification process. Longstanding airport security like manual inspections of
physical identity and travel documents will remain in place for a long time to
come. What will likely be phased out
are boarding passes, but those had little security value or true verification
mechanisms behind them anyway – they’re mostly symbolic tokens for logistics.
Myth: Facial recognition is the precursor to a Big
Brother scenario inside airports and beyond.
With facial recognition
for travel purposes, it’s worth noting the distinct difference between
surveillance – constantly scanning a crowd for identification – and the use cases for verification at check-in or boarding currently being proposed and
piloted in some countries around the world. In the latter, it’s a 1:1:1 closed
loop match in that the live face presented need only match the digital face
image on the passport and the reference image associated with the flight
manifest. No data is stored away, no additional data is gathered, no further
matching is executed and nothing leaves the transaction. This is likely to
emerge as best practice, and will thus likely be applied when this technology arrives
in South Africa.
The use of facial
recognition for identification would be something that the police or security
services would undertake and would thus be governed by the relevant laws.
Myth: The technology isn’t currently reliable enough
to be trusted.
Technology matures
rapidly in the modern era. Facial recognition is already standard in the
Microsoft Windows operating system and on some models of iPhones; consumers can
see for themselves how well these applications work. The technology being introduced
in airports is just as good.
There are limitations,
of course, including the necessity for good lighting, but that would apply even
to a human agent: people don’t see in the dark, either. It is because of
limitations like this that a human expert constantly backs up facial recognition for
now.
And there’s an advantage that the
technology confers, too. Facial recognition in its current state also isn’t
subject to nearly the same conscious or unconscious biases that inherently skew
human judgement. In that way, it’s already a step up.
Couple that with the fact that facial
recognition has been fine-tuned in more controlled scenarios and put through rigorous real-world
field tests. Even better, recent and coming developments in AI and machine
learning will only advance facial recognition’s capabilities and increase
levels of accuracy.
If facial recognition and its potential
benefits for air travel are going to get a fair shake, we must work from a verifiable, consistent set of facts rather than
being distracted by fiction, distortions and conspiracy theories. After all,
the purpose of the technology is safer, easier and more convenient travel. And
that benefits us all.
[1] Ondela Mlandu, “SA airports to get new
time-saving biometric system”, Getaway
(3 December 2018), available at https://www.getaway.co.za/travel-news/airports-to-get-new-time-saving-biometric-system/.
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