Every time I fly from SFO, there’s a face-tracking camera that takes your photo after you stand up close to it. There’s definitely some sort of data harvesting there and there’s no opt out that I know about.

I also have Clear, which was voluntary but certainly collected my biometric data years ago.

I also have Global Entry, which has a similar scanning tech to point 1.

▲

abeppu a day ago | parent | next [-]

Yeah, I think the crappy side of it at this point is that the biometric data they collect is never leveraged to help you as a citizen.

If I lose my passport while abroad, given that the government has my fingerprints etc, why can't I use those biometrics to reenter the country (and have a replacement passport reissued immediately)?

Officially, you are supposed to be able to opt out of the face recognition cameras at security but I think whether staff actually respect that is not consistent.

	▲	a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		[deleted]
	▲	hedora a day ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The camera at SJC says it deletes the scan immediately after querying the database. That makes opt out (which the sign says is allowed) kinda pointless, unless the opt out also deletes the existing database entries. Tl;dr, I don’t bother opting out.

▲

duskdozer a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The first kind you can just opt out: https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2025/05/19/why-how-opt-o...

▲

a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

▲

matwood a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, with GE/PreCheck and all the border crossing I do, I gave up on my biometric data being private long ago.