Senators Say TSA’s Facial Recognition Program Is Out of Control, Here’s How to Opt Out

A bipartisan group of 14 senators has urged the leaders of their respective caucuses to rein in the Transportation Security Administration’s use of facial recognition, saying it poses a significant threat to privacy and civil liberties and hasn’t been shown to keep travelers safer.

Their letter, sent to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), comes just before one of the busiest travel periods of the year when millions of Americans are expected to pass through the nation’s airports.

“The potential for misuse of this technology extends far beyond airport security checkpoints,” the senators wrote. “Once Americans become accustomed to facial recognition scans, it will be that much easier for the government to scan citizens’ faces everywhere, from entry into government buildings to passive surveillance on public property like parks, schools, and sidewalks.”

The letter was signed by Jeffrey Merkley (D-OR), John Kennedy (R-LA), Ed Markey (D-MA), Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Steve Daines (R-MT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Mike Braun (R-IN), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Peter Welch (D-VT), and Laphonza Butler (D-CA).

While the TSA’s facial recognition program is currently optional and only in a few dozen airports, the agency announced in June that it plans to expand the technology to more than 430 airports. And the senators’ letter quotes a talk given by TSA Administrator David Pekoske in 2023 in which he said “we will get to the point where we require biometrics across the board.”

The senators said that the TSA has not produced any evidence in response to congressional inquiries showing that the implementation of facial recognition has led to the discovery of more fraudulent identity documents. Meanwhile, the TSA has said the systems have a three percent false negative rate—how often they fail to properly match a person to their image in the database—which would equate to 68,000 failures daily if the technology was spread across all airports.

The agency’s authority to use facial recognition comes from the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, passed more than two decades ago in 2021, which authorized biometric security screening at a time when facial recognition was still a nascent technology.

The 14 senators called on Schumer and McConnell to tighten that authority during the Senate’s upcoming reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration.

“It is clear that we are at a critical juncture,” they wrote. “The scope of the government’s use of facial recognition on Americans will expand exponentially under TSA’s plans, with little to no public discourse or congressional oversight.”

To opt out of a face scan at an airport, a traveler need only say that they decline facial recognition. They can then proceed normally through security by presenting an identification document, such as a driver’s license or passport.