Most U.S. airports will have facial recognition technology within the next four years.
The Department of Homeland Security has said U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) plans to install biometric exit systems at nearly all commercial airports. CBP’s goal is to apply biometric exit screening to more than 97 percent of commercial air travelers departing the United States to improve the agency’s ability to identify individuals who overstay visas.
As of September 2018, just 15 U.S. airports had deployed facial-recognition systems. Those locations processed more than 2 million passengers using the technology and identified roughly 7,000 travelers who had overstayed their visas.
Currently, CBP verifies visa compliance primarily through biographic manifest data, such as name and passport number. Biometric exit systems — which compare travelers’ faces to passport or visa photographs — are intended to streamline that process. CBP reports a match rate around 98 percent, positioning biometrics as a faster, more automated alternative to manual checks.
However, the technology has known limitations. Tests and studies have shown inconsistent performance across demographic groups. In 2018 the ACLU highlighted cases where facial recognition delivered poorer results for people of color. Research from the CAPA – Centre for Aviation also noted that systems trained on datasets dominated by majority-group subjects can struggle to identify ethnic minorities accurately.
Other factors can reduce accuracy as well: changes in facial hair or weight, eyewear, hats, scarves, lighting conditions and camera angles can all affect matching performance. These variables mean that while biometric exit systems can increase processing speed and detection capacity, they do not eliminate errors and should be implemented with attention to fairness, transparency and appropriate oversight.