This report was originally published by Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge
An alarming new report issued by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says that the government could soon push mechanisms ensuring that its TSA airport security personnel never selectively hasten the screening process in order for passengers to catch their flight on time, but that gathering biometric data through controls like facial recognition technology will soon be a requirement for all boarding procedures.
The new report on the Biometric Entry-Exit Program authored the DHS Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General gives a glowing review of controversial new biometric surveillance, already in a test roll out at dozens of major airports nationwide, but notes some hurdles remain to broader implementation, especially the “hurdle” of airlines insisting that passengers be allowed to make their flights on time.
Over a year ago DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that they would integrate government databases with a private tech company to speed up biometric processing which involves the capturing of facial scans to match them with files already in the system. This initially rolled out only at a couple of select airports. But since that time the program has exploded to include a dozen or more international airports.
It’s essentially what China has already implemented on a large, Orwellian scale, and involves plans for possible mandatory face scans for all travelers to foreign destinations. The new Biometric Entry-Exit Program report is among the first major reviews of the experimental program’s performance and effectiveness.
And naturally the DHS bureaucrats’ absolute last concern is actual airport and airline timely travel and efficiency. The Intercept reports among the chief problems: “the report notes with palpable frustration, was that airlines insist on letting their passengers depart on time, rather than subjecting them to a Homeland Security surveillance prototype plagued by technical issues and slowdowns.”
The key section of the DHS report is as follows :
Demanding flight departure schedules posed other operational problems that significantly hampered biometric matching of passengers during the pilot in 2017. Typically, when incoming flights arrived behind schedule, the time allotted for boarding departing flights was reduced. In these cases, CBP allowed airlines to bypass biometric processing in order to save time. As such, passengers could proceed with presenting their boarding passes to gate agents without being photographed and biometrically matched by CBP first. We observed this scenario at the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport when an airline suspended the biometric matching process early to avoid a flight delay. This resulted in approximately 120 passengers boarding the flight without biometric confirmation.
Later in the report deep concern is voiced over airlines’ consistently pushing for flights to depart in a timely manner. These pressures result in local TSA screening agents “Repeatedly permitting airlines to revert to standard flight-boarding procedures without biometric processing may become a habit that is difficult to break.”
The DHS complains about this despite that elsewhere in the report they admit, “airline officials we interviewed indicated the processing time was generally acceptable and did not contribute to departure delays.”
Citing the goal of being able to scan and capture biometric data on “100% of all departing passengers” by 2021, the report laments that current difficulties in the screening process could make this impossible, especially in light of the pesky airlines pushing for consistently timely departure.
The report concludes that current logistical problems “pose significant risks to CBP scaling up the biometric program to process 100 percent of all departing passengers by 2021.”
In a worrisome section of the document, officials make the suggestion that “enforcement mechanisms or back-up procedures to prevent airlines from bypassing biometric processing prior to flight boarding.”
Meanwhile privacy advocates and civil libertarians have long decried the government overstep and abuse inherent in such biometric scanning.
One privacy researcher, Harrison Rudolph, who runs the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown University Law School, was cited by NPR during the early phase of the program as saying: “DHS hasn’t issued a single rule under this program to protect Americans’ privacy,” and added, “So what DHS decides to do with this information tomorrow, I’m not sure. And without rules there may be few protections for Americans’ privacy.”
With such issues left completely unsettled, and with the government claiming it would never, never abuse such a technology… the consistent refrain in reports over the last year has been it is fast coming to an airport near you.
And clearly DHS and TSA couldn’t care less whether or not you actually catch your flight.
This technology is not 100% foolproof.
People gain and lose weight which changes all
these factors. Makeup artists, trans sex, and
other factors can and will deceive every technology
out there.
Isn’t this why they wanted to monitor our communications?
The criminal element in our govmt is more dangerous
than most people boarding a plane.
The DHS is a total Sham, Run by Z-I-O-N-I-S-T-S under the patriot act and the first thing GW Bush did was appoint a Z-I-O-N-I-S-T-S Dual Israehelli Citizen Michael Chertoff to run America’s DHS Dept of Homeland Security. He then hired Israehelli Security companies through the TSA to Run US Airports. And the fact is all the 911 hijacking terrorist come through an Airport where this same Israehelli Security Company was running the TSA Show at these airports that were penetrated by these hijackers. Why are any foreigners running any security here in America? The Fix is in Folks.
Who appoints a foreign Dual Citizen to be the head of the Largest Security Job in America called the DHS?. Folks the deck was stacked, then this Chertoff 3ew Shill also hired the Foreign Israehelli Security Company to run the Boston Marathon Bombing fiasco. Again, why is any foreign company running security anything here in America.
Wanna know (((WHO))) the real Enemy is???, and already here in America? Running security that is not secure, and feeling up your grandma at the airport? Thats (((WHO))).
DHS can bite me. Nothing legitimate about them. They were designed and set up by former high-ranking members of the KGB and Stasi during Bill Clinton’s 2nd term. Their mission is NOT to serve we the people but to eventually go to war against us. They will eventually become a state terror organization just as the KGB and Stasi were.
The unLawful and unconstitutional (hence “Null and Void” at its conception) PATRIOT Act’s crowning jewel is the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). What most Americans do not understand is that the DHS was/is modeled after Heinrich Himmler’s RSHA, where they created a system that was incorporating all Nazi police departments under the control of what they called the Department of National Security. The DHS (Germany) was also known as the Reichssicherheitshauptamt.
Look in the US Constitution, there is no delegated power to create a professional governmental law enforcement, instead they are REQUIRED in writing to use the Militia of the several states. That is found within the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 15. The duties TO THE Militias of the several states those who serve within our governments have is found in Clause 16.
Each state’s Militia is made up of “We the People” protecting our own interests, homes, states, nation, and enforcing our governments. The Militia, which holds those who serve within our governments accountable to the people of each state, has as its constitutionally assigned duties to:
— Enforce the US Constitution (supreme LAW of this nation) and each state’s Constitution (highest LAW of the state except if conflicts with the supreme LAW),
— Enforce and keep the “Laws of the Union” (which are constitutional laws ONLY),
— Protect the country against all enemies both domestic and foreign, and
— “to suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions”.
There is NO delegated authority to create anything else, making all except elected sheriffs (historically speaking) and the Militias of the several states. The US Constitution requires that the American people be armed and trained so that they can do that duty. If they wish to refrain from their required duty, they must pay a fine to the Militia of the several states. Those in government are not even supposed to be armed, THAT duty belongs to the people, here read TEnche Coxe on that subject…
Tench Coxe, Delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787: “The power of the sword, say the minority…, is in the hands of Congress. My friends and countrymen, it is not so, for The powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from sixteen to sixty. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords and every terrible implement of the soldier are the birthright of Americans. THE UNLIMITED POWER OF THE SWORD IS NOT IN THE HANDS OF EITHER THE FEDERAL OR STATE GOVERNMENTS BUT, where I trust in God it will ever remain, IN THE HANDS OF THE PEOPLE.” (caps are mine)
Tench Coxe, on the Second Amendment where he asserts that it’s the people with arms, who serve as the ultimate check on government: “As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people duly before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow-citizens, the people are confirmed by the next article in their right to keep and bear their private arms”. (‘Remarks on the First Part of the Amendments to the Federal Constitution’, in the Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789)
Richard Henry Lee, 1st Senate: “A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves”
George Mason, Co-author of the Second Amendment: “I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people except for a few public officials. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
An editorial on Gage’s proclamation stressed that an armed populace must keep government in check: “The opposing an arbitrary measure, or resisting an illegal force, is no more rebellion than to refuse obedience to a highway-man who demands your purse, or to fight a wild beast, that came to devour you. It is morally lawful, in all limited governments, to resist that force that wants political power, from the petty constable to the king…. THEY ARE REBELS WHO ARM AGAINST THE CONSTITUTION, NOT THEY WHO DEFEND IT BY ARMS.” “A Freeman,” PA. EVENING POST, June 27, 1775, at 2. [Vol. 7:2] (caps are mine)
The day we let in millions of undocumented alliens and Muslims was the day we gave up the right to not have biometric checks. When nobody knows who is in the country, biometrics are the last line of defence against terrorists and criminals.
An Israeli-style system would be preferable (nobody gets anywhere near an airport without first being scanned and checked), but this solution seems to go nowhere in the US and Europe.
Biometrics are the present and the future. Advances in technology and science mean these systems will be able to saw through data at blistering speed, parsing facial, fingerprint, DNA, venous profile, gait, weight etc. data to ensure identity. Eventually, such tech will guard gateways into all major cities and even shopping malls etc. As with all tech, it will get faster and cheaper as more companies pile into this space and innovate.
I, for one, am sick of the trash that wanders most cities and would be happy to have them blocked in a thousand different ways as they try and move around.
But they won’t be blocked. That would be racist.
It is only you and I who will be inconvenienced.
Good!
It’s about time the airlines got in the way of big brother and his police state.
Even if a name and face are accurately matched to a serial number, instantly cataloging you with 100% certainty, the entrenched elite see no moral difference, between Marinus van der Lubbe and Martin Neihmoller.
The same people, who they are supposed to be profiling, will be taking your food carts past security and building minarets on Ground Zero, while they gaterape the elderly, Baptist schoolmarm. Anchorbabies in uniform ID Anglos 100mi past the physical border. Three felonies a day and six degrees of separation.