The US state of Florida’s second busiest airport will roll out high-tech facial recognition software at all gates. Critics fear that this step could erode personal privacy, according to the media portal LifeSiteNews.
By 2023, all of Miami International Airport ‘s (MIA) more than 130 gates will be equipped with facial biometric recognition technology, making it the “largest implementation of biometrics at a US airport”. Critics fear that this surveillance could undermine privacy.
“MIA says it will merely require passengers to step in front of a camera at a boarding gate and have their identity verified,” reported Biometric Updatemagazine.
As early as 2017, the MIA started a pilot project with biometric output technology in cooperation with the US Customs and Border Protection Agency (CBP). In 2019, a biometric output technology was introduced in cooperation with the information technology company SITA, CBP and Lufthansa.
Not everyone sees the introduction of this technology as a positive development. Steven Mosher, president of the Population Research Institute, told LifeSiteNews that this “intrusive biometric screening technology” being rolled out at the MIA is reminiscent of tools widely used by China.
“For my part, I don’t want to live in a high-tech digital dictatorship like we see in China. Where everyone is followed by security cameras all day, not to mention the phones,” Mosher said.
We’re dangerously close, he added. The US would have to introduce “robust privacy laws” to protect citizens from this type of government surveillance.