By Sean Hollister , a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CN

Here’s the letter from 14 senators slamming TSA facial recognition in airports

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2024-05-08 00:30:10

By Sean Hollister , a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.

The TSA’s been planning to expand facial recognition to a whopping 430 US airports over the next several years — but a bipartisan group of 14 senators is now challenging that.

Facial recognition “poses significant threats to our privacy and civil liberties, and Congress should prohibit TSA’s development and deployment of facial recognition tools until rigorous congressional oversight occurs,” reads part of the May 2nd letter (via Gizmodo) from Sens. Merkley, Kennedy, Markey, Marshall, Cramer, Wyden, Warren, Daines, Braun, Sanders, Lummis, Van Hollen, Welch, and Butler.

They add later that “this powerful surveillance technology as deployed by TSA does not make air travel safer” and suggest that the TSA’s current error rate of 3 percent would lead to 68,000 mismatches each day if expanded to all US airports.