This should terrify you. If it doesn't, you're not paying attention. This Conversation Between A Passenger And An Airline Should Absolutely Terrify You.
I have said for years, "If you want to know what living in a police state is like, go hang out at the airport."
Basically, a JetBlue passenger was able to board her flight by just getting her face scanned. No boarding pass, no ID. A JetBlue camera scanned her face, the data was sent to TSA and her identity was verified. The passenger did not voluntarily give this data, nor permission to be in this program. Of course, she can "opt-out" of the JetBlue program, but her face is already in the databases of the federal government.
I am scared beyond belief over this.
A camera connected to the internet, any camera that can catch your face can send that image to Homeland Security and tag who you are in seconds. "All well and good, but I'm not a criminal. It's not my concern." I have a one-word answer to that. BULLSHIT.
Because if somebody can get into that database, that data can be altered. With access, a person with nasty intentions toward you can either flag you as someone else (say I copy your biometric data into some living super criminal's record), or I copy their criminal record into your file. Either way, every time you get your face scanned, every alarm goes off and police are dispatched immediately to that location. You get arrested, spirited away and it might be a few hours, a few days or never, before (or if) the government figures out that both you and them are the victim of a cruel prank.
A well-timed example just came to my attention: Apple face-recognition blamed by New York teen for false arrest. This shows how such a "confusion" can happen.
Ousmane Bah, 18, said he was arrested at his home in New York in November and charged with stealing from an Apple store. The arrest warrant included a photo that didn’t resemble Bah.
The story here is Mr. Bah lost a non-photo learners permit. Someone else used it while stealing from an Apple store, so the thief's face (his facial recognition profile) ended up on the record of Mr. Bah, who was arrested and charged with the thefts. Mr. Bah is now suing Apple for $1 Billion. I personally think the damages should be twice the entire net profits of the company for the year.
A government with that kind of capability can be nothing but repressive. China with its' Social Credit System is heading there at full speed. Here's some punishments if you cause trouble, like walking your dog without a leash. And if someone gets mis-scanned and their offense drops into your record, you're screwed. I am sure there is no process to get bad incidents off your record. We have already seen that with the "no-fly" list. If your name and data ends up on that list, I am positive that it would be easier to transmute air into gold than to get bad data expunged from your Homeland record.
Think about that.