Why You Can (And Should) Opt Out Of TSA Facial Recognition Right Now

In a growing number of Transportation Security Administration lines at U.S. airports, you may be asked to look into a camera that takes your photo.

But did you even know that you can say no to the face scan? And that you may have good reason to?

Since 2020, the face scan is part of TSA’s screening program in select airports across America. Through its facial matching technology, TSA claims it can more efficiently and conveniently verify that the person in front of an agent is the person shown on their identification.

TSA says this is an optional program for travelers on domestic flights, while some foreign nationals may have to participate to be allowed on international flights.

Theoretically, there should be visible signage that notifies travelers they can proceed through airport security without doing the facial scan. In reality, not everyone will see the sign ― and it might not be in a language that a traveler understands.

I am one of the travelers who’s been agreeing to get my face scanned in airport security lines for years. But amid alarming reports of travelers experiencing bad treatment from border control officials, I’m reconsidering whether I should be submitting a face scan so easily to the U.S. government.

Should you, too? I talked with privacy experts about the benefits of opting out of this scan.

The benefit to declining “is you don’t have to submit your picture to the government, for the government to scan it and store it under their rules,” said Travis LeBlanc, a lawyer and a former member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent federal agency.

In its 2023 privacy impact assessment about using facial identification, TSA said it “only uses the biometric data to perform identity verification at the checkpoint, and to assess critical operational and technological components of this proof of concept.”

But the potential power of this biometrics technology is vast. In its 2022 roadmap document, TSA outlines a future where the agency expands its biometrics capabilities “to validate and verify an identity and vetting status in real-time.”

In response to HuffPost’s questions about the future of “real-time biometrics,” a TSA spokesperson said in a statement that “a real-time picture simply means that an image is taken at the kiosk and that ‘live’ photograph is matched against the image on the identification credential.” The agency said there have been “situations” where a boarding pass was issued to a person different from the one standing at the checkpoint but did not specify how many imposters its facial recognition technology has caught.

Jennifer King, a privacy and data policy fellow at the Stanford University Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, said the TSA’s public communications are “a little vague about what they were doing with the data.” That vagueness, along with her skepticism with how the Department of Homeland Security has preserved travelers’ privacy in the past, is what leads her to decline the face scan every time.

“I’m sure that the dream of enforcement agencies would be to be able to track people in real time based on something like facial recognition,” King said.

To be clear, TSA explicitly says it is not currently using its biometrics technology for surveillance and that it does not store biographic data for any travelers. “Photos are not stored or saved after a positive ID match has been made, except in a limited testing environment for evaluation of the effectiveness of the technology,” TSA states.

TSA is not the only agency scanning your face at the airport. Customs and Border Protection, which also does facial scans at airport checkpoints, said that if you’re a U.S. citizen, CBP will keep your photo for no more than 12 hours after identity verification; if you’re not a U.S. citizen, there is no guarantee that CBP will delete your airport security photo quickly.

But this kind of facial recognition technology has the potential to one day be used for other purposes beyond identity verification.

As LeBlanc noted, “TSA is part of the Department of Homeland Security, which is also responsible for immigration enforcement. There’s lots of different uses that you could see for these images.”

There’s also the concerning reality that the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board ― which is supposed serve as a watchdog for travelers’ civil liberties ― recently had key members fired by the Trump administration.

LeBlanc and the board’s two other Democratic members were fired by the Trump administration in January. These firings should give you pause if you care about airport privacy, LeBlanc said. LeBlanc is suing the U.S. government for his reinstatement, saying the termination was illegal.

The board is now down to one Republican appointee and cannot take on any new projects without a quorum.

The public has “lost the watchdog that would be there to promote transparency as well as make recommendations on changes to the system that would better balance privacy and civil liberties,” LeBlanc said. He said that the board was preparing a report on TSA’s use of facial recognition before the firings.

TSA should not give you a hard time for exercising your right to opt out, but there have been reported instances where people got pushback ― including a U.S. senator who says he was told that saying no to the face scan would cause a significant delay. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) still declined and faced no apparent delay.

Saira Hussain, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, declines the face scan every time she travels. Sometimes when Hussain refuses, she said she gets the response of, “‘We already have your information, so it’s not like you’re giving us anything more.’ And I’m like, ‘OK, well, I’m choosing the opt-out option I have.’”

If you, like me, have been obediently agreeing to airport security face scans, it’s not too late for us to start opting out, either. Every face scan is a “unique opportunity” to assert your rights, Hussain said.

You can simply decline by stating to an agent that you do not want your photo taken and want to opt out of a face scan. From there, a TSA agent should follow standard procedure of looking at your ID and your face to verify your identity. You should not lose your place in line for declining a photo.

As TSA itself states on its website, “There is no issue and no delay with a traveler exercising their rights to not participate in the automated biometrics matching technology.”

Beyond asserting your individual privacy rights, saying no could send a larger message on the kind of treatment the public will tolerate at airports. TSA’s Credential Authentication Technology units, which run the face scan, are currently used in nearly 84 airports nationwide and are expected to be in more than 400 airports “over the coming years,” TSA states.

If more people keep declining face scans, maybe TSA will think twice “about whether it’s actually effective to roll out programs like these,” Hussain said.

“If there’s no pushback, then [TSA is] just going to keep instituting more and more invasive techniques,” she said.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story has been updated with comment from TSA.