The TSA site specifically says that the photos are not stored. AI training data generated from the “live” photo(s) they take would be just as useful to them for the things people should be worried about and there’s no mention of them not storing that data.
It’s a “but they could.” The fact they are doing the comparison means there’s some sort of machine learning/AI going on which would have to generate some sort of dataset to function. So if they weren’t going to store any of that data they could say so instead of only saying “photos” won’t be stored.
The site does later say “Biometrics are not used for surveillance – Facial recognition technology is solely used to automate the current manual ID credential checking process and will not be used for surveillance or any law enforcement purpose.” (so they do seems to understand the difference between “photos” and “biometrics”) but things can change and the possible existence of such data would make it much easier to end up legally/illegally being used for such things than if it doesn’t exist.
The TSA site specifically says that the photos are not stored. AI training data generated from the “live” photo(s) they take would be just as useful to them for the things people should be worried about and there’s no mention of them not storing that data.
Is that even something they do though? Or just another “but they could” argument?
It’s a “but they could.” The fact they are doing the comparison means there’s some sort of machine learning/AI going on which would have to generate some sort of dataset to function. So if they weren’t going to store any of that data they could say so instead of only saying “photos” won’t be stored.
The site does later say “Biometrics are not used for surveillance – Facial recognition technology is solely used to automate the current manual ID credential checking process and will not be used for surveillance or any law enforcement purpose.” (so they do seems to understand the difference between “photos” and “biometrics”) but things can change and the possible existence of such data would make it much easier to end up legally/illegally being used for such things than if it doesn’t exist.