Orlando International Airport, Florida’s busiest flying hub, announced plans last week to expand its current program of collecting mandatory facial scans of all international travelers.
It is now the first airport in the nation to require the facial scanning of all international passengers. Many others are still testing the technology, which is used primarily to improve boarding time and move passengers through customs more efficiently.
Americans can decline the facial scan and opt instead to have their passports and boarding passes checked manually, according to CNN. Other outlets reported the news as well.
Harrison Rudolph of the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown University Law Center noted, however, that Americans have been inadequately informed of that option, as he told CBS.
International travelers arriving at or departing from Orlando will have their faces scanned. Those scans will be used to verify passengers’ identities by comparing them with information from a Department of Homeland Security biometric database.
And just as Orlando’s airport is expanding the use of facial recognition technology, the city of Orlando is putting the brakes on its own pilot project. It announced last week that it’s abandoning the program, allowing a contract with Amazon to expire. The program leveraged the power of Amazon’s Rekognition technology.
The decision to let the contract expire came in the wake of significant blowback from civil liberties organizations about the operation.
In a June 25 letter from the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida addressed to Orlando’s mayor, commissioners, and city council, the organization demanded the city “immediately suspend its use of Rekognition and any other face surveillance system under consideration or operation.”
The letter alleged that Orlando’s Police Department had been deploying Amazon’s Rekognition surveillance system in public. Further, it said its use was legislatively unauthorized and that it presented a “grave threat to Orlando residents and visitors.”
The ACLU and other civil liberties backers are concerned facial recognition technology enables the tracking of residents who are not under suspicion of having committed a crime. It violates Fourth Amendment protections, in other words. Further, they’re concerned its use could disproportionately impact marginalized groups.
Related: Facial Recognition Can Steal Our Privacy — But Not if One Project Succeeds
“People should be free to walk down the street without being watched by the government. Face surveillance in Orlando threatens this freedom, particularly where government agencies deploy it without community debate, without local legislative oversight, and without rules to prevent abusive use,” said Nancy Abudo, the legal director of ACLU of Florida, in the letter.
For now, in Orlando, the city’s use of facial recognition technology by local law enforcement authorities has been suspended.
But take a short drive to the city’s airport — and its use is in full force by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the federal law enforcement agency charged with ensuring the nation’s safety and security.
Michele Blood is a Flemington, New Jersey-based freelance writer and a regular contributor to LifeZette.
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