Facial Scans at US Airports Violate Americans' Privacy, Report Says (nytimes.com) 137
Ron Nixon, writing for The New York Times: A new report concludes that a Department of Homeland Security pilot program improperly gathers data on Americans when it requires passengers embarking on foreign flights to undergo facial recognition scans to ensure they haven't overstayed visas. The report, released on Thursday by researchers at the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown University's law school, called the system an invasive surveillance tool that the department has installed at nearly a dozen airports without going through a required federal rule-making process. The report's authors examined dozens of Department of Homeland Security documents and raised questions about the accuracy of facial recognition scans. They said the technology had high error rates and are subject to bias, because the scans often fail to properly identify women and African-Americans. "It's telling that D.H.S. cannot identify a single benefit actually resulting from airport face scans at the departure gate," said Harrison Rudolph, an associate at the center and one of the report's co-authors. "D.H.S. doesn't need a face-scanning system to catch travelers without a photo on file. It's alarming that D.H.S. still hasn't supplied evidence for the necessity of this $1 billion program," he added.
Customs can do quite a bit. (Score:3)
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Researchers at the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown University's law school made this claim. Not the Supreme Court, which has granted great leeway to what customs can do at the borders. It's a legal opinion paper that is just that, opinion, with no legal standing.
Honestly, I think facial scanning is less of a privacy violation than cupping my testicles because the airport scanner got a distortion on my shoulder when I passed through it the last time.
Security theatre (Score:3, Insightful)
Has NEVER required evidence for the necessity. Why should this be any different?
Remember who this treatment is reserved for (Score:3, Insightful)
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uh, no, I fly for the air force. We waste a lot of time with security theater too. Same guy carrying weapons on this leg now nneeds to go through security on the next leg on the same airplane on his way home. It's stupid.
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Airport security only applies to those of us who fly commercial. When is the last time the top critters in our government flew commercial?
The Obama administration. Does seem like a long time ago, though.
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It could be a class thing. Or maybe there's just no risk in a rich person taking himself hostage on his own aircraft.
Goat Rope (Score:2, Insightful)
They can build a $1 billion program to catch people leaving late, but cannot do a single thing to keep people out. Besides, what's the penalty if they're on a flight home one day past their visa? Throw them in jail and then send them home?
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but cannot do a single thing to keep people out.
Actually, ICE is catching more illegal immigrants within 100 miles of the border since Trump was elected, although total deportations are down.
Besides, what's the penalty if they're on a flight home one day past their visa?
The penalty for overstaying a visa is that you will have a harder time getting another visa in the future.
Disclaimer: I think immigration is good for America, and I wish we had more of it.
Overstaying visas? (Score:4, Insightful)
it requires passengers embarking on foreign flights to undergo facial recognition scans to ensure they haven't overstayed visas.
Okay, maybe I’m missing something...
So if I’m visiting the US and I overstay my visa. Now I’m getting on an airplane to leave the country and they want to make sure that I didn’t overstay?
Hello? I’m leaving...
What, you’re going to arrest me for overstaying my visa while I’m leaving? And you’re going to spend a billion dollars to catch me as I do just what you want me to do—leave!
Really? My tax dollars at work...
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PROTIP: It's an excuse to spy on American citizens
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PROTIP: It's an excuse to spy on American citizens
I'm sorry, but what are you smoking? You're going through TSA processing and you've already shown your ID, so they know you're leaving. The airline has forwarded your data to DHS already, and they've gathered your passport data. Exactly what new information is this system providing regarding your departure?
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a guy from the NSA would turn up at your door with beer and Cheetos?
Let him bring beer and cheetos, but he can go downtown and buy his own smokes. It would be cheaper for him than buying beer and cheetos.
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Don't forget simple greed. Cost 1,000 million dollars, now how much of that is profit, half. Forget security or spying on Americans, apparently it doesn't work but some pack of greedy fuckers are shoving what, 5 hundred million dollars in their pocket and laughing all the way to their tax haven to hide that money. Never, ever forget simple greed, no grand conspiracy required, just a scam to steal a billion dollars. Just look at the F35 Flying Pig, the baconator express, all about pork for the military indus
Re:Overstaying visas? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just so that they can spend more money to detain you, give you a trial, make you serve a prison sentence for overstaying your visa, and then send you home at taxpayer expense. All instead of just letting you leave on your own.
So you wind up on the "Don't come back" list (Score:2, Informative)
Easy - they put you on the "You can't come back" list.
No tinfoil needed.
Re:Overstaying visas? (Score:5, Interesting)
You can thank the nytimes for providing absolutely NOTHING of value to this story.
For a more detailed explanation try here https://gizmodo.com/homeland-securitys-airport-facial-scans-are-buggy-and-p-1821496186
Seems the point is to catch people leaving who 'pretend' to be the offender (who has over stayed their visa) by using the offender's passport when they depart. The scam works like this: Person A overstays their visa, they give their passport to person B who flies out of the country using it. Now the electronic records show that Person A has left the country, when in fact they haven't.
At least the plan on paper. But really, there are soooo many holes in this scheme it's like a Wile E Coyote story line.
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Seems plausible, but if true it exposes an even worse problem - how easy it is for someone to book and board a flight (let alone international) with documents belonging to someone else. If this is prevalent enough that an illegal immigrant can afford it, doesn't that make the no-fly list ineffective?
Even worse, a 2 for 1 - one of these passport offenders could give their documents and facilitate someone who is on the no-fly list.
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how easy it is for someone to book and board a flight (let alone international) with documents belonging to someone else.
Not hard to book one. Trivial, even, if you're in cahoots with them. If you look similar, you can probably make it through security as them, too.
If this is prevalent enough that an illegal immigrant can afford it,
Afford what? A return flight? If they're on a short visa, they probably already have that booked. If not, a few hundred dollars to some non-US destination (like Canada, eh?).
Even worse, a 2 for 1 - one of these passport offenders could give their documents and facilitate someone who is on the no-fly list.
Sounds like you've just given the perfect reason for facial recognition -- to pick up what the TSA guy might have missed.
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I meant afford the illegal services. The plane ticket is probably the easier part, compared to finding someone who looks like them, and is willing to fly out and risk an anomaly on their own passport.
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compared to finding someone who looks like them
Friends and family are cheap. Maybe even free.
and is willing to fly out and risk an anomaly on their own passport.
I'm sorry, but using someone else's passport doesn't create an anomaly on your own. You don't show both of them on the way out. And you aren't showing the other guy's when you come back. You're just another returning citizen at that point.
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Seems like they could spend a lot less than a billion dollars and just provide a document scanner to the person who looks at your photo id and boarding pass on the way in to airport security. The scanner could do OCR on the ID, confirm the validity of the boarding pass, and prompt the TSA employee to request a passport for sc
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The scanner could do OCR on the ID, ...
And lots more for the TSA agent to do to make the security theater line even slower...
And then the guy who wants to overstay just walks out the exit after his "official departure" has been logged by TSA and is never seen again.
Or, if you think the airline would report his no-show at boarding to someone, he gets a friend with a US passport to use his boarding pass to take the flight. Now it is irrefutable that he's gone.
and US citizens departing to a country that requires a passport for entry).
I suppose if we're getting Mexico to pay for the wall, we can get every other country o
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I think the friend would have to be someone who wasn't coming back, because otherwise the no-show on the flight that got the friend past security would be an issue that person would have to resolve when trying to come back.
What "resolve"? "I decided not to go." It's not a crime not to take a flight that you've checked in on. The airline may get pissy about applying the money for that flight to something else, but that's why you get a really cheap flight.
You don't think any airline would actually deny someone who didn't make one flight the ability to fly ever again on that airline, do you? No, sorry, they'll happily take your money to fly you from London to Chicago even if you skip out on half a dozen flights from Chicago to
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I think the friend would have to be someone who wasn't coming back, because otherwise the no-show on the flight that got the friend past security would be an issue that person would have to resolve when trying to come back.
What "resolve"? "I decided not to go." It's not a crime not to take a flight that you've checked in on. The airline may get pissy about applying the money for that flight to something else, but that's why you get a really cheap flight.
You don't think any airline would actually deny someone who didn't make one flight the ability to fly ever again on that airline, do you? No, sorry, they'll happily take your money to fly you from London to Chicago even if you skip out on half a dozen flights from Chicago to Indianapolis. If you do find such a moronic airline, then use a different airline to fly back. Delta will take customers United doesn't want all day long.
You had suggested that the friend would be taking the flight to the other country. Coming back from someplace they weren't recorded as going to after the recorded no-show on the flight that got them past security and no other record of their departure from the country would be hard to explain to US Customs/Immigration on the way back in. They could tell some story that starts with "I changed my mind and decided to go to Venezuela by boat.." But, I don't think it'd be an easy sell.
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You had suggested that the friend would be taking the flight to the other country.
Yes.
and no other record of their departure from the country would be hard to explain to US Customs/Immigration on the way back in.
You can leave the country without a record of it here. That's how lax the US exit process is.
They could tell some story that starts with "I changed my mind
They don't have to tell any ICE agent on the way back in that they "changed their mind". ICE isn't going to care that someone missed a domestic flight. It's ridiculous to think they would.
and decided to go to Venezuela by boat
Canada and Mexico are a lot closer, and a lot of US citizens go to either or both every year.
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You had suggested that the friend would be taking the flight to the other country.
Yes.
and no other record of their departure from the country would be hard to explain to US Customs/Immigration on the way back in.
You can leave the country without a record of it here. That's how lax the US exit process is.
If you go back to the start of this discussion, you'll see that that's what I had suggested changing,
They could tell some story that starts with "I changed my mind
They don't have to tell any ICE agent on the way back in that they "changed their mind". ICE isn't going to care that someone missed a domestic flight. It's ridiculous to think they would.
and decided to go to Venezuela by boat
Canada and Mexico are a lot closer, and a lot of US citizens go to either or both every year.
Yes, but they have information sharing agreements with the US government.
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If you go back to the start of this discussion, you'll see that that's what I had suggested changing,
You can suggest changing it, but the fact is how it is now. If you're talking about the enhanced role of TSA as being immigration and passport control for other countries, I think I've already dealt with that. It's not going to happen. TSA is not immigration and customs enforcement, not even for our own country.
Yes, but they have information sharing agreements with the US government.
Share the information that doesn't exist. The US doesn't keep track of who leaves. When you come back, they don't know how you left. The fact they don't know how you left isn't proof of a crime, it
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You can thank the nytimes for providing absolutely NOTHING of value to this story.
This is juvenile. I like Gizmodo's Adam and David example, but all of their quotes are right out of the report itself aside from this one.
"As one of the report’s co-authors told The New York Times,"
The NYT article goes further than internet searches for background info. ..." ..."
"John Wagner, deputy executive assistant commissioner for field operations at Customs and Border Protection, said
"Laura Moy, who helped write the report, said
"But Senators Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Mike
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YES! As a US citizen I absolutely want to know if you over stayed a visa, even if we are catching you on the way home!
Its solid grounds for NOT extending another visa to you!
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After committing any number of crimes..
If a person over stayed once what will stop them for just getting another set of documents and trying to re enter the USA?
Leaving for a short holiday and then back to the USA illegally for decades?
That person who stayed in the USA illegally can then be documented and never allowed back into the USA. Other nations can be warned by the USA of that
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Simple enough to do properly. Scan passports when leaving the country. The airlines already do it, use that data.
Scanning someone's passport doesn't mean that that person is the one standing there having his passport scanned. Facial recognition at least looks at the person for his identity, not his papers. It's harder to hand your face to someone else; easy to hand them your passport.
And facial recognition can be installed at the gate to watch people as they go on board. If the person intending to overstay the visa gets a buddy to help, it would be easy to defeat "passport scanning". The one who "needs to leave" has
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With facial recog you need a buddy that looks somewhat like you. Not a perfect foil by any means.
No system is perfect. Does that mean we should have no systems?
There is also the issue of buddy returning with no record of leaving.
You must not fly international out of the US. They don't care if you leave. You can even leave without needing a passport. The only place they care about a passport when you leave is the airline, and that's for two reasons: so they know you have a passport and they won't have to haul your ass back when you get turned away from the destination for not having a passport, and so they can send the data to DHS/ICE for no-fly. But since you can leave
Eyeroll (Score:4, Funny)
It's telling that D.H.S. cannot identify a single benefit actually resulting from airport face scans at the departure gate
As if benefit analysis was EVER a consideration for DHS or TSA... I would love to see the benefit analysis of confiscating people's nail clippers from carry on luggage.
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As if benefit analysis was EVER a consideration for DHS or TSA... I would love to see the benefit analysis of confiscating people's nail clippers from carry on luggage.
Not funny ... True.
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Sure it is invasive,
How is it invasive? It's not looking under your clothes like millimeter waves do. It's not scanning your body for ferrous metal. You don't have to stop or produce documents or anything.
All you have to do is have your face out where it can be seen, like almost everyone already does. Heck, you have to have your face out to show the TSA security line checker anyway, because he's busy comparing your id to your face.
The airlines have already sent your data to DHS, and you're ticket data is scanned going throug
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A person entered the USA with a set time to work, study or enjoy the USA. With very clear and simple set conditions.
They became illegal when they failed to return to their own nation after a set time. A time as they said they fully understood as part of been granted a set time to be in the USA.
We Hold Neccesity of Revenue to be Self-Evident (Score:5, Insightful)
Private companies got $1 billion in revenue.
This is America. What greater necessity could there be than a company making money?
While I agree with the headline.... (Score:2)
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Except, who cares if they overstayed, they're leaving! Worry about it when they try to come back!
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Except, who cares if they overstayed, they're leaving! Worry about it when they try to come back!
If you don't catch them overstaying, how can you worry about it when they come back? Pray tell, how do you know that Achmed overstayed his visa the last time he was here when he's standing in front of you as an ICE officer now, unless you caught him doing it last time and put it in his record? How does the embassy issuing the visa know that THIS time they shouldn't issue Achmed the visa because last time he cheated, unless he was caught cheating last time?
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From the flight records. You don't need to catch them in the act... and even if you catch it the moment they book the ticket, it doesn't matter, you want them to leave.
And if someone wanted to leave without a paper trail, anyone can just walk out to Canada or Mexico. Niagara Falls and Tijuana come to mind.
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From the flight records.
They didn't fly. They took a different route out. On time, before the visa expired.
and even if you catch it the moment they book the ticket, it doesn't matter, you want them to leave.
Of course it matters. You want them to have already left, and you don't want them to come back. You can't do the latter if you didn't catch them failing to leave on time. What if they don't book the ticket? If they're doing something illegal, why would they do the booking? They're going to try to slip out as someone else. With someone else's paperwork. But their own face.
And if someone wanted to leave without a paper trail, anyone can just walk out to Canada or Mexico.
Yeah, so your flippant "flight records" solution is alr
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I'm simultaneously poking two holes in the plan. One being that the people choosing to fly out on an expired visa can be data mined from a flight database without needing to be caught in the act. The other being that it is simpler, less risky* and far less illegal to walk out of the country and into another one, with a fresh visa, and then fly home. There would be no proof whatsoever of visa overstay. This scanner program is trying to catch a complex Visa scam while a far simpler (and likely more effect
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One being that the people choosing to fly out on an expired visa can be data mined from a flight database without needing to be caught in the act.
That assumes they are flying using their own, expired paperwork.
The other being that it is simpler, less risky* and far less illegal to walk out of the country and into another one,
It is much harder to do that than to simply try to fly home.
Gosh, we won't catch all the criminals with this facial recognition stuff. I guess we shouldn't even try. We won't catch all of any kind of criminal, so I guess we shouldn't even try. That does make life much simpler for everyone, even the criminals.
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.... I don't really think that it is something that anyone has any sort of inviolable right to when they are in a public place.
I'd generally agree however I also don't think anyone has the right to constantly monitor us in public places, because there will come a time when it really is constant monitoring. There needs to be some limits.
Here's Why I Think It's Legal (Score:2)
Re:Here's Why I Think It's Legal (Score:4, Informative)
Well, first off, there's the fact that research done by visual researchers reveals that that human forgets faces not of his/her ethnicity significantly faster their own ethnicity. Your memory of a face in a crowd declines in under 10 seconds, and happens even faster than that when you're glancing at someone who doesn't look like you. Crowds are also very confusing because of other visual factors that are similar in what you're looking at and distract ... movement, colours, clothing, shapes, etc.
Second, people have an utterly terrible memory for faces, and one's cognitive ability runs across a wide spectrum. Unless there is a mark or deformity that is significant, people are generally poor with faces, especially ones in a crowd. And while it's unlikely that someone with a condition like prosopagnosia is going into law enforcement, it still means that about 2% of the population is hopelessly "blind" when it comes to recognizing people's faces. Additional research shows, in experiments we can replicate, that even close family members, if their appearance is slightly altered, are missed in a crowd to a significant degree when scanning faces in a crowd.
Third, it takes on average 2.5 seconds for the average human to look at and recognize a face. Sometimes as long as 5 seconds. How do you imagine that you could have enough security personal around to scan the thousands of people who move through crowded public spaces like airports, train stations etc every minute or two?
I've been in the same room as two police detectives trying to get accurate descriptions of criminals one time, and the variations of what the guys supposedly looked like from one interviewee to the next was amazing to hear. There is no way a human scanning a crowd is going to do anywhere near as good a job at facial recognition than decent software that stores potentially millions of faces (note that accuracy is debatable, and is still pretty hard to get right with most of these systems). I think the problem here are the questions around who has this data, how is it being used that you're not being told about, how long is it kept, who is it being shared with, and what is the measurement of it's success (besides a few companies making 100s of millions of dollars). A better system takes into account different physiological aspects of you ... height, weight, appendage movements, stride type and length, etc. But I have no clue whether or not it's legal, though.
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Basically they build a database of all citizens, maybe right now not crossreferenced to Social Security Number, but it will come. as soon as the tech is capable of it.
This is different than the passport database they already have exactly how, again?
The Ostensible Reason For Scans is Probably False (Score:2)
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So that they can never return to the USA legally again.
They might be on a holiday and think they can just reenter the USA again.
The point is to legally document their crime and return them to their own nation.
No getting back into the USA again. The USA can then provide that persons details to many other nations and warn them about that persons crime.
That person knew they had to return to their own nation after a set time. They understood they did not ge
tyranny (Score:2)
We have become a caricature of the Soviet Union.
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Do you think they're only scanning Visa holders?
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Worse than that, it's not just international flights. There's no US exit process, so international flights depart from the same gates as domestic. The only way this would work is to scan everyone at the airport.
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The only way this would work is to scan everyone at the airport.
It's an idea. Apparently the Chinese [theguardian.com] have already gone much further than that.
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The only way this would work is to scan everyone at the airport.
No, just scan everyone going out a gate with an international flight.
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Except any gate can have an international flight. My main experience is with United but, the same gate at O'Hare / Newark / IAD can have a flight to Hong Kong or London followed by a flight to Houston. Hell sometimes even the plane to Houston continues on to South America, meaning the same flight has a mixture of domestic/international passengers.
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Except any gate can have an international flight.
First of all, not true. And second, you know when a certain gate has an international flight and when it doesn't. You only use it at a gate where there is an international flight.
can have a flight to Hong Kong or London followed by a flight to Houston.
Yes, so the scanner is on when there is a flight to London boarding and not on when the flight is going to Houston. Is it really that hard?
Hell sometimes even the plane to Houston continues on to South America,
Uhhh, the plane may go on, but not without reboarding. It's an international flight, it needs different handling. The airline is going to make sure everyone on an international flight has their
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This is completely false. All international flights are in terminal 4 at O'Hare. Domestic flights are in terminals 1, 2, or 3.
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No, your comment is completely false. Lufthansa and ANA depart from terminal 1, as well as United international flights. Air Canada departs from terminal 2. Terminal 4 is for International ARRIVALs so they can be processed via immigration, and other international airlines not lucky enough to use the main gates.
Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org] concurs with my memory. Apparently Terminal 3 also has Iberia and Japan Airlines.
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But why would you want to facially scan departing international flights? That would be silly. It's arriving international flights that you would want to do facial scans, and those are all in terminal 5.
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... this whole article is about scanning departing passengers to catch Visa overstays.
Go home, you're drunk :).
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"Don't they check your passport at security and/or the airline counter?"
Sure but lots of people have several passports and lots of countries allow people to change their name when getting their passport, so to better fit in with the local crowd.
(read not getting harassed by local foreigner haters)
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There's a few passport checks on an international itinerary.
1. Providing the info to the airline.
2. Showing the airline (or code-share partner) the passport to print a boarding pass and check luggage. Even if the "showing" is a scan on a kiosk.
2a. This might be skippable if you print at home, I always have luggage and no printer so I don't know how this works out.
3. The boarding pass will have a big honking "INTL" on it when going through security, even for the domestic leg, prompting the TSA to ask for th
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2a. This might be skippable if you print at home, I always have luggage and no printer so I don't know how this works out.
You gotta show one to the airline sometime. They need to know you have it so they won't get stuck hauling you back when you don't and can't get in at the destination.
3. The boarding pass will have a big honking "INTL" on it when going through security, even for the domestic leg, prompting the TSA to ask for the passport as a travel document. They also write some scribbles on the boarding pass.
They always write "scribbles" on the boarding pass, even for a domestic flight. As for demanding a passport, I can't recall them ever doing that to me.
It is trivial to get around this, too. Instead of one flight, take one to a hub and then one international. I.e., one domestic, one international. Go through security for the domestic flight us
Catching the wrong people (Score:3, Insightful)
Since when do Americans need a visa to visit America? By definition anyone carrying a US passport should be exempt, if you believe their excuse for doing the scans.
What part of scanning everybody are you having problems with? They are scanning everybody, Americans and non-Americans alike, in order to catch the ones with expired visas.
What I don't get: these are people leaving the country. If somebody has an expired visa, what they are supposed to do is to leave the country. I don't see the point of a billion-dollar program (!) to catch the people leaving; what they're supposed to be doing is catching the people on expired visas who are not leaving the country.
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I think what the GP was saying is that if you have a US Passport, you shouldn't have to go through the scan because you couldn't possibly be a visa holder.
If they are scanning everybody, then that is just fucking stupid and a waste of time. So that's probably exactly what they're doing since I'm pretty sure "Fucking Stupid and a Waste of Time" is the TSA's motto.
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It is cheaper than modifying all the airports to provide exit immigration controls like nearly every other country in the world. By knowing who has left, you theoretically have a tally of who has not.
I'm torn on the issue; if CBP has the right to do it on arrival, what is different about it being on exit?
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They went through the security checkpoint, but you don't know that THEY took the flight; it could easily be a ticket-swap scam.
Every other country (I have been to) requires an immigration exit, aside from within the EU zone of course.
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If somebody has an expired visa, what they are supposed to do is to leave the country.
They were supposed to have already left. It's the overstay that is the illegal part.
They are scanning everybody, Americans and non-Americans alike,
How is the camera supposed to know that you are "an American" just by looking at you, without scanning you to figure that out?
what they're supposed to be doing is catching the people on expired visas who are not leaving the country.
They should catch all of the people in the US on an expired visa, whether they are in line to leave or not.
Are you one of those folks who goes to court to fight a speeding ticket with the excuse that the cops ought to be out catching speeders on a different street instead of the one you were on?
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If they're leaving, why not just let them leave on their own rather than go through the expense of detaining them and going through the whole deportation process?
Because you want it on the record that they overstayed so they don't get another visa to do it again. You assume there will be a "deportation process" when there is no need to have one. They're leaving. They have a ticket. You're just making sure they don't get to come back.
What is to be gained?
It enforces immigration law. It prevents a criminal from getting another chance to break immigration law by overstaying his visa again. It makes people who might think it doesn't matter if you overstay a US visa because nothing will be d
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It prevents a criminal from getting another chance to break immigration law by overstaying his visa again.
Someone who overstays their visa is not a criminal. Overstaying ones visa is a civil offense, not a criminal one. As for the rest of your argument, it is my opinion that the cost in money and freedom is not worth the incredibly tiny gain to be had.
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Someone who overstays their visa is not a criminal.
In interesting language you speak, that looks so much like English but isn't. Someone who breaks the law is a criminal.
Overstaying ones visa is a civil offense, not a criminal one.
It is a violation of law, and that is what the common term "criminal" means. It is not limited to the strict legal definition of "what kind of offense was it?" We're not in a legal forum or standing in front of a judge where precise legal terminology is expected. We're speekin da English.
As for the rest of your argument, it is my opinion that the cost in money and freedom
Well, since the "cost in freedom" is precisely zero, it must be a money issue for you. Catching criminal
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Someone who breaks the law is a criminal.
Only if they commit a criminal offense, like theft or assault. Not if they only commit a civil offense, like speeding or overstaying a visa.
It is a violation of law, and that is what the common term "criminal" means.
No, it is not. The precise legal meaning is the same as the common meaning. People who speed are not criminals. People who litter are not criminals. People who don't keep their sidewalks clear of snow are not criminals. People who overstay their visas are not criminals.
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It finally allows for a system most normal nations have. To count every person in and out of the USA.
A face arriving legally is reconciled with a face returning to their own nation on time and within the time of their documentation.
If they ever want to re visit the USA they are in good standing.
Not on time and over staying? That person can now be found and a digital version of a "Be on t
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What part of scanning everybody are you having problems with?
Personally, that this is supposed to be a simple solution to a complicated problem that will probably have less to do with catching people than funneling money into somebodies pocket.
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A smart traveler would overstay their VISA, and then purposely get caught. Free flight home?
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A smart traveler would overstay their VISA, and then purposely get caught. Free flight home?
I don't know where you get that from. They've already paid for the ticket home. If they're lucky, they make that flight. More likely they'll miss that flight and have to pay a rebooking or itinerary change fee, plus lodging when the next available flight is two days away.
Why do you think the US is going to pick up the price of the ticket they already have?
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The only reason we care whether somebody overstays their visa is because this is a way people illegally immigrate into the U.S.: by legally entering, but then not leaving.
If somebody who overstayed their visa leaves, the fact that they are leaving is good proof that they are not illegally immigrating into the U.S..
These aren't the ones we want to catch.
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These aren't the ones we want to catch.
They broke the law. Why shouldn't we want to catch them? If we don't care how long they stay just as long as they leave, then how can we "catch" anyone who has overstayed? "I was going to leave next week, I promise!" Oh, ok, you weren't going to stay forever. You're ok.
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But if they're going to set up a billion dollar program to catch criminals, I'd say they should catch the ones that are worth the bother to catch.
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I parked in a no-parking zone once, so I guess I'm a criminal, too.
Did you think this has something to do with immigration law?
But if they're going to set up a billion dollar program to catch criminals,
Immigration violations, not just generic "criminals".
I'd say they should catch the ones that are worth the bother to catch.
They are. It is worth catching the ones who are leaving, too. You can't flag their record as being disallowed back in unless you catch them first.
If you aren't going to bother trying to catch them, and thus don't care about the violation, why bother having the law? And how do you prosecute others who do the same thing when you've already said you don't care about some who do it? Equal treatme
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If you aren't going to bother trying to catch them, and thus don't care about the violation, why bother having the law?
The purpose of the law is to stop illegal immigration by people coming in with a legal visa and then staying. The ones who leave are not staying.
And how do you prosecute others who do the same thing when you've already said you don't care about some who do it?
This question makes no sense. Saying "we don't choose to spend a billion dollars on a system to catch people who are leaving anyway" does not in any way make a statement "we can't prosecute people who don't leave."
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These aren't the ones we want to catch.
They broke the law. Why shouldn't we want to catch them?
Because doing so is expensive, and using this technology degrades the privacy of citizens and foreign nationals who are here legally?
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Because doing so is expensive
Enforcing laws always costs money. Is that an excuse not to have any laws?
and using this technology degrades the privacy of citizens and foreign nationals who are here legally?
Think about it a minute. This is not a camera on a public street where nobody knows who anybody is until the facial recognition identifies them so they can be tracked. This is a US airport secured area where you must show ID just to enter, where your face is already compared to that picture ID, where the airline has already collected your passport information and forwarded it to DHS, and your boarding pass is scanned and verified whil
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So if "The only new bit of information that facial recognition provides is that the face matches", then why is the government doing this?
Because knowing that the person walking down the jetway is the person they claim to be is an important piece of data, especially for non-citizens on a short-term visa.
These people already identified themselves, the DHS already knows who they are, so why spend the money?
They didn't identify which people are actually leaving versus walking back out the exit.
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and can be used to invade our privacy!
You keep saying that despite all the evidence that shows otherwise. I've pointed out how there is no invasion of privacy. How about you show there is something, other than just repeating "invasion of privacy, invasion of privacy, look at the bad man invading our privacy!"
I'm not debating the expense, so go jump up and down somewhere else.
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The act of "overstays their visa" is illegal and that person needs to be removed and returned to their own nation.
The "removed" part ensures they can never legally return to the USA.
What are they doing while they "overstay their visa"?
Working illegally? Not paying tax? Crime? Using city, state and federal support services that are for actual US citizens who need help?
A person in the USA illegally could be leaving for any number of reasons and then return
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What are they doing while they "overstay their visa"?
For the most part: spending money.
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For anything less than an 8 hr drive, I typically do the same. I'll be there a couple hours later, but save the flight expense, baggage fees, and destination rental vehicle cost.