Florida’s Orlando International Airport is set to begin scanning the faces of all passengers traveling to or from another country.
The face scanners, already deployed in eight other airports across the country, will check a traveler’s photo against a Department of Homeland Security biometric database to verify his identity.
While other airports using the system only scan the faces of passengers on some departing international flights, Orlando will be the first to scan all travelers, both U.S. citizen and otherwise, on both incoming and outgoing.
Jennifer Gabris, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, however, told Mike Schneider of the Associated Press that U.S. citizens will be allowed to opt-out but may be required to provide photographs instead.
Harrison Rudolph, an associate at the Center on Privacy & Technology at the Georgetown University Law Center, argues though that Homeland Security “doesn’t seem to be doing an adequate job letting Americans know they can opt out.”
“We’re not talking about one gate. We’re talking about every international departure gate, which is a huge expansion of the number of people who will be scanned,” Rudolph added. “Errors tend to go up as uses go up.”
As noted in a report from NBC News last year, the same face-scanning system used at Virginia’s Washington Dulles International Airport appeared to do more than just verify identities.
One American passenger was arrested while at the airport after authorities were alerted to an active arrest warrant.
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