It’s Time to End the Scam of Flying Pets; New York Times, February 4, 2018

David Leonhardt, New York Times; It’s Time to End the Scam of Flying Pets

"The whole bizarre situation is a reminder of why trust matters so much to a well-functioning society. The best solution, of course, would be based not on some Transportation Department regulation but on simple trust. People who really needed service animals could then bring on them planes without having to carry documents.

Maybe a trust-based system will return at some point. But it won’t return automatically. When trust breaks down and small bits of dishonesty become normal, people need to make a conscious effort to restore basic decency."

Airlines Are Giving Your Face to Homeland Security; Daily Beast, August 9, 2017

Aliya Sternstein, Daily Beast; Airlines Are Giving Your Face to Homeland Security

"The agency admits there are many privacy issues surrounding this “partner process” that need some resolving (PDF). As CBP’s own June privacy impact assessment states, there remains “a risk that commercial air carriers will use the photographs for purposes beyond departure verification” because “commercial air carriers are not collecting photographs on CBP’s behalf or under CBP authorities.”

Delta and JetBlue said they do not store or directly access passenger biometric data...

To Jeramie Scott, national security counsel at the Electronic Privacy Council, her vision of a planet blanketed by interconnected security cameras and computers seemed all too plausible.

“I don’t think that’s a crazy world. It’s just a scary world for us,” Scott said. “The mission creep possibility is a real, real thing.”

ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley said it would be convenient to walk through checkpoints where you have to stop and show papers today, but would you want to take out your passport and show it to authorities every 10 feet?

“If your face is your passport you’re doing the same thing—we end up with a checkpoint society where people are being tracked,” Stanley said."

Facial recognition could speed up airport security, but at what risk to privacy?; CBS News, June 16, 2017

CBS News; Facial recognition could speed up airport security, but at what risk to privacy?

"Your face may soon be the only thing you need to board a flight. Some airlines are already testing facial recognition technology with the federal government.

The idea is to ditch boarding passes and increase the certainty of a passenger's identity...

"Implementation of the use of biometrics need to be scrutinized very closely," said Jeramie Scott of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, who worries about the use of personal identifiers that cannot change. 

"Increasingly, as we consolidate biometric data into big databases and we use it more and more, those databases will become targets, and the risk of data breach increases greatly," Scott explained. "