The Traveler Privacy Protection Act

During this holiday season, many of us will be traveling through airports to visit friends, family, and loved ones, which means we'll be passing through security.

At airports around the country, the Transportation Security Administration is deploying a facial recognition screening system to verify your identity, and I've introduced a new bill to stop it called The Traveler Privacy Protection Act.

Here's why: The TSA program, which uses facial recognition to match passengers' faces with their government ID on file, has been implemented without any guarantees of its effectiveness or ability to protect passenger privacy. That's a slippery slope into a surveillance state, and nothing could be more damaging to our national values of privacy and freedom.

TSA says participating in the facial recognition screening is optional, but I've personally experienced agents making it difficult to opt-out.

The bipartisan Traveler Privacy Protection Act aims to guard your privacy and prevent the TSA from using airports as a site to collect Americans' sensitive facial biometric data by:

• Repealing existing authorization for TSA to explore facial recognition technology and require explicit congressional authorization for future use.
• Immediately banning TSA from expanding its use of facial recognition.
• Requiring TSA to end its facial recognition program and dispose of facial biometrics data within 3 months.

We've seen the damage unchecked facial recognition technology does to privacy and freedom in other countries around the world.

Let's not let it happen here. Let's say no to the TSA using facial recognition in our airports.

Onward!

Jeff