NYTimes: ‘Biometric Exit’ Quietly Expands Across U.S. Airports, Unnerving Some

NYTimes: ‘Biometric Exit’ Quietly Expands Across U.S. Airports, Unnerving Some by Claire Fahy (“René Rodriguez accompanied his daughter to Ireland last month as she prepared for a fall semester abroad. As he boarded the flight from Boston Logan International Airport to Shannon Airport, he found two federal officers in the Jetway taking photos of passengers with their cellphones … Those officers were part of an expanding federal program called biometric exit, which involves taking photos of passengers leaving the country and applying facial recognition technology to ensure that travelers match their identification documents. This process is known as facial comparison. For foreign nationals, the photos can remain in a database for up to 75 years. For U.S. citizens, the photos are matched to their passports and deleted within 12 hours, according to the Department of Homeland Security. On Sept. 15, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs approved a proposed rule, clearing the way for the program to expand to all airports, seaports and land crossings across the country. While the approval formalized the expansion, in reality the program has been growing for years and is now in use at dozens of airports and at seaports.”)