IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020 - 53

I

n late 2018, Jet Blue, American Airlines,
and Delta began utilizing facial recognition software (FRS) in American airports:
Jet Blue explained that the company had,
" in partnership with U.S. Customs and
Border Protection (CBP), today announced
the roll-out of its first fully-integrated biometric self-boarding gate. " The airlines' cooperation
with the CBP, the Department of Homeland Security,
and the Transportation Security Agency is part of a
larger program titled the Biometric Air Exit (BAE)
aimed at " biometrically [verifying] the departure of
foreign nationals from the United States. " In this way,
the face included in a passport or visa, and/or included in mechanisms like the BAE, becomes the citizen's
way of " proving " their worth as a citizen and their " belonging " to the membership of that nation. Examining
how FRS is used to identify and sort citizenship within
mechanisms like the BAE is immensely important;
alongside this, the process of how " citizen " and " noncitizen " is defined, as data points within larger mechanisms like the BAE, need to be made transparent.
The categories of " citizen " and " non-citizen, " as sortable data categories, are not objective and are vulnerable to political purposes; building FRS with such
categories at their cores leaves FRS open to manipulation by political systems. Increasing transparency
throughout systems like FRS serves dual purposes: it
will generate informed and effective policy and regulation of the technology; and it will clarify the political motivations behind labeling certain individuals
and populations as citizens and others as non-citizens.

The BAE and Facial Recognition
Software at the Borders
Jet Blue, American Airlines, and Delta have begun
heavily relying on facial recognition software in American airports: a November 2018 press release from Jet
Blue explained that the company had, " in partnership
with U.S. Customs and Border Protection... today
announced the roll-out of its first fully-integrated
biometric self-boarding gate at New York's John F.
Kennedy International Airport " [1]. Similarly American
Airlines explains that " Instead of scanning boarding
passes, the new one-step facial recognition program
will scan and verify a customer's identity with U.S.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in seconds at
the gate " [2].
The repeated reference to " U.S. Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) " and the linking of airlines with American government security agencies is explained further
within the September 2018 " TSA Biometrics Roadmap
for Aviation Security and the Passenger Experience " : the
document outlines biometrics identification, such as
DECEMBER 2020

∕

facial recognition, as essential, in no small part because
it provides symbiotic partnerships with the Department
of Homeland Security (DHS), CBP, and industry partners.1 More specifically, the expanded commercial
deployment of FRS is the infrastructure for the " Biometric Air Exit, " a CBP program aimed at " biometrically
[verifying] the departure of foreign nationals from the
United States " [3]. By the DHS's own description in its
2018 " Entry/Exit Overstay Report, " the BAE is:
a robust cloud-based service that leverages existing advance passenger information to create a
pre-positioned " gallery " of face images from U.S.
Government holdings...The photographs can
come from passport applications, visa applications, or interactions with CBP at a prior border
encounter where CBP typically takes a photograph...On exit, the matching service identifies
the traveler, creates an exit record, and enables
CBP to biometrically confirm the departure of inscope, non-U.S. citizens [3, p. ii].
By tapping into a pre-constructed gallery of photos
from other agencies and corporations, the use of FRS
within the BAE executes three tasks: the first is to identify and track all people entering and exiting the country; the second is to sort that mass of people into citizens

Increasing transparency of systems
using facial recognition software
will clarify the political motivations
behind labeling certain individuals as
citizens and others as non-citizens.

and non-citizens; the last is to legitimate/ " authorize " the
privileges granted to each person based on their status
as it relates to US citizenship. While the industry partners adopting the technology might point to the convenient and efficient customer service this deployment
of FRS provides, projects like the BAE make clear
that airports are sites of what Nikolas Rose and Carlos
Novas call " citizenships projects, " which the authors
define as " the ways that authorities [think] about (some)
1
Of particular note is Appendix C titled " Stakeholders Consulted " which
lists eight government entities, four airports, four aviation industry associations, five airlines and a catchall item for " technology venders " that is
amended as " various " [10].

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

53
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - December 2020
