I don't like TSA or the US security state, but I really find it hard to see why this has attracted so much attention. When you enter the airport, you're surrounded by cameras from numerous government and commercial entities, no doubt performing facial recognition. When you get to your destination, your photo will be taken by the destination country plus countless other surveillance cameras along the way. And unless you like long lines, you've already submitted fingerprints and yet another photo to TSA or CBP for precheck. Even if you didn't, all REAL IDs (except a foreign passport) require digital storage of the ID photo--that's what they are matching your face to at the checkpoint.

(During the pandemic, I had a job that let me--I mean, a friend of my choice--do my own e-verify/I-9 form. When you enter your passport number, the e-Verify system spits out a digital copy of the photo you sent it to prevent counterfeit or altered photos.)

I just don't understand how one more potato quality still capture of your face, that by definition is very similar to those they already have, changes the equation much.

You've precisely described the reason I will not fly commercial anymore. All of this surveillance has a chilling effect. On citizens, on business, on international trade.

Flying privately requires none of this. Which is how you know they're not serious about security but about control of the masses.

Also, the thing you're ignoring, and perhaps why you fail to understand the problem, is you haven't bothered to ask what the false positive rate is. Would you enjoy being stopped and arrested by very cocksure police simply because a computer made a mistake and they refuse to believe that?

Because they are using more than just a 2d photo, these things are taking almost microscopic details in. I just pay the devil and ask for the personal treatment and skip these things. These are not potato quality and the government isn’t as backward at tech as you think. Remember when you’re dealing with cops there is nothing you can say or do that will be to your advantage in court , the same goes in real life. Skip all of these types of security theater as it’s possible. While I did not want to see the new regime change in Washington because of the high chance of economic and challenges to democracy, one of the things they might cut back on is stuff like this; a Harris admin certainly was not going to be.

Where is the line where you say "stop"?

People started complaining about cameras, and airport id checks, and facial recognition, and REAL ID, and incentives like PreCheck to support mass fingerprinting for a decade or three.

At some point the rubber band breaks, or at least one of the ropes snap.

I don't fly anymore if I don't have to because of this security theatre, so the one thing it has a positive effect on is perhaps ecological. Otherwise it is completely hysterical, a remnant of some US lawmakers that wanted to look though at some point. It has grown and grown and just is a caricature of sensible security policies.

That autocratic states readily pick up on it should give you pause, but instead of questioning the efficiency of a security apparatus, it is excused because the status quo is already shitty.

God I hate this argument and this blunt misunderstanding of computer vision. (I've dealt with it so many times on reddit) Frequently I'm met with these arguments with some imaginative justification for this technology. At this point it's hard to be convinced that the arguements aren't an AstroTurf by security vendors. (Yes dang, I realize this is bad to make this accusation to say but I'm speaking generically and over a large group of people)

Additionally you threw in a false equivalency: But a ton of things are going on..you're useless in fighting it. On top of that you threw in an accusation that "if you don't then face longer lines".

The cameras that are above aren't good enough to do a confident identification of an individual. They're great for tracking where unique blobs go.

The picture they are doing a comparison against is a profile picture and consistent lighting. Additionally the old picture that is on your license is a much older photo. The thread here is that the people who are taking your image now are updating their models and maintaining the models of what you look like. With that they are able to retroactively and perform future lookups on different visual datasources about what you did. (Gas stations, stores, weed shop, adult toy store, walking down the red light district, being on a train, etc)