Why would any law-abiding American balk at permitting the feds to vacuum up his biometric data at the airport? The Transportation Security Administration is running a pilot program in which travelers stand in photo kiosks that compare their faces with a federal database of photos from passport applications, driver’s licenses, and other sources. TSA promises its new airport regime, which could vastly expand next year, will respect Americans’ privacy.
If you believe that, I can sell you a bridge in Brooklyn really cheap.
TSA has long been one of the most intrusive and inept federal agencies. For 20 years, every TSA boondoggle has been shielded by a bodyguard of bureaucratic lies.
“Trust us” is the TSA mantra for the new program. “TSA hasn’t actually released hard data about how often its system falsely identifies people, through incorrect positive or negative matches,” the Washington Post notes. TSA will be relying on photo-identification systems that have a misidentification error rate up to 100 times higher for blacks and Hispanics.