Aol.com: TSA will now take your photo before you fly. Why privacy advocates say you should opt out.

“TSA’s implementation right now is not the worst-case scenario,” said Jeramie Scott, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Project on Surveillance Oversight. “But the fact that there are no protections in place to limit how it’s used in the future or to guarantee the protections today remain in place ― it raises the risk and the likelihood that it will be expanded in very problematic ways.” 

… “There’s no law requiring the necessary transparency, oversight and accountability to ensure that people’s privacy and civil rights are protected,” Scott said. “Whatever you think the protections are, TSA can change on a whim.” 

Opting out of the process allows travelers to send a message to the TSA that they are uncomfortable with facial recognition technology, Scott said. 

… Scott acknowledged the government already has a dizzying amount of information on us between what we hand over when filing taxes or applying for benefits to the photos we upload online and the surveillance cameras that exist on nearly every street corner. 

He is more worried about the future. 

If we normalize the use of facial recognition software, he argues, the government could easily build a database of images that are used to track someone’s real-time movement, associations and participation in activities otherwise protected by the First Amendment. 

“Right now, we generally control our ID,” Scott said. “We get a physical ID that we can control and decide when to identify ourselves or hand over our identification. With our face as our ID, we lose that. Not only can the government then identify us without our permission, they also can do it without our knowledge if they want to.”

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