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."

FTC warns companies that ‘big data’ comes with the potential for big problems; Washington Post, 1/7/16

Andrea Peterson, Washington Post; FTC warns companies that ‘big data’ comes with the potential for big problems:

"Companies are tracking more data about consumers than ever. Practically every click you make online creates new records in some distant database, and your real world actions, too, can increasingly be tracked through your mobile phone or new commercial surveillance advances.

But the Federal Trade Commission, one of the government's chief privacy watchdogs, just warned companies to think twice about how they use those vast data troves.

The agency on Wednesday released a new report that advises companies on how to avoid hurting the most vulnerable as they push further into the booming "big data" economy."