After experiencing its busiest yr on report, the bustling airport — which serves tens of thousands and thousands of passengers yearly — plans to increase using controversial facial recognition know-how to test vacationers’ identification. The face-scanning software program, already in place at some worldwide gates on the airport, is slated to be put in at roughly 20 extra departure gates by the tip of September and a big majority of the airport’s greater than 120 gates by subsequent summer time.

“Using this know-how permits [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] to make current journey necessities extra environment friendly, which creates a extra seamless, safe, and safer expertise for vacationers,” Greg Chin, Miami-Dade Aviation Division spokesperson, wrote in an e mail to New Occasions.

Amid strain from lawmakers to ramp up airport safety post-9/11, facial recognition know-how has made its manner into dozens of airports throughout the US and Puerto Rico in recent times. The Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) plans to make use of it in additional than 400 airports over the following few years.

In 2018, the know-how was launched at MIA by U.S. Customs and Border Safety (CBP) to display screen passengers arriving from worldwide locations. In Could 2022, the Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners accepted a $9.1 million contract for the county aviation division’s mission to put in facial screening know-how at MIA’s gates to scan departing worldwide vacationers. The airport began to deploy the tools round October 2022.

It really works like this: Vacationers current themselves in entrance of a kiosk with a digital camera that mechanically matches their reside picture with passports on file in CBP information techniques. The encrypted course of is meant to take seconds, eliminating the necessity for passengers to take out their boarding move or passport, and is separate from TSA safety screening.

The contract requires Swiss IT firm SITA to produce and keep greater than 240 biometric cameras for the airport. The deal includes $4.5 million in funds to SITA for tools, software program licensing, set up, coaching, and associated charges. The corporate is about to earn $600,000 in yearly funds from the county for upkeep companies, totaling greater than $3.6 million over a six-year interval.

U.S. residents have the flexibility to decide out of the face-scanning course of and as a substitute undergo a handbook assessment of their journey paperwork. Nonetheless, in keeping with CBP, all non-US residents are required to undergo the biometric identification course of.

“CBP will make sure that all authorized and privateness necessities are met,” the company says.

Whereas touted as a strategy to hasten the air journey expertise, facial recognition software program is very controversial, with some cities like San Francisco banning using the know-how by police and different authorities businesses. As with different new applied sciences, it faces skepticism for potential misuse, information storage implications, and potential bias within the screening course of.

In February, following TSA’s enlargement of the know-how into a number of the nation’s largest airports, U.S. senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Ed Markey, and Jeffrey Merkley despatched a letter to the company demanding that it halt this system.

The senators define a number of considerations within the letter, writing that not solely may the info gleaned wind up in the palms of personal companies or unhealthy actors, however that the know-how may additionally exacerbate racial discrimination throughout screening. They be aware a 2019 research from the Nationwide Institute of Requirements and Expertise, which discovered Asian and African American folks had been much more more likely to be misidentified by facial recognition know-how than white males.

Additionally they warned that TSA’s information has the potential to be hacked, which already occurred as soon as earlier than in 2019.

“Growing biometric surveillance of People by the federal government represents a threat to civil liberties and privateness rights,” the letter reads.