Speaker 1: All Zone media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, Welcome back to It Could
Speaker 2: Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and coping
Speaker 2: with dystopia. And one of the first signs of our
Speaker 2: dystopia coming to be was the establishment of the TSA
Speaker 2: and the Department of Homeland Security more broadly, obviously DHS
Speaker 2: much more problematic than just the TSA. We did a
Speaker 2: couple of episodes on them with Behind the Bastards back
Speaker 2: in the day. But you know, the TSA came to
Speaker 2: be right after nine to eleven, and both its establishment,
Speaker 2: you know, the seeming necessity of it, and the kind
Speaker 2: of impositions into personal privacy that it made commonplace. We're
Speaker 2: both harbingers of the very fucked up era we find
Speaker 2: ourselves in now. And the TSA is an interesting law
Speaker 2: enforcement agency to me from the perspective of a normal person.
Speaker 2: I think they're kind of the least objectionable of our
Speaker 2: federal law enforce spin agencies, right They at least, I
Speaker 2: should say, of all of the cops that we have
Speaker 2: in this country, they're the ones you're least likely to
Speaker 2: have a serious problem with, right, Like, they're not real
Speaker 2: cops in the way that most cops are. They don't
Speaker 2: like ticket or arrest you generally, unless you're one of
Speaker 2: the startling number of Americans who gets caught with a
Speaker 2: loaded handgun trying to go through airport security. Mostly, and
Speaker 2: I've flown way more often than I want to remember.
Speaker 2: Mostly my experience with TSA agents is they check your ID,
Speaker 2: you know, they stare at an X ray machine where
Speaker 2: your shit goes through it. Sometimes they alert and swab
Speaker 2: some stuff. But you know, for me, it's usually not
Speaker 2: that big a deal. For most people, I know it's
Speaker 2: not that big a deal obviously, you know, the degree
Speaker 2: to which it's a problem is going to vary widely
Speaker 2: depending on whether or not you're a white dude. But
Speaker 2: that said, still less potential for things going horribly violently
Speaker 2: wrong and with a lot of police interactions. So I'll
Speaker 2: give them that. And it's interesting to me that kind
Speaker 2: of given this fact, the TSA is so hated, not
Speaker 2: by I think most Americans. I think we're all kind
Speaker 2: of frustrated by them. We know, you know, they're not
Speaker 2: great at their jobs. They get caught in tests, letting
Speaker 2: shit through all the time. It's kind of a pain
Speaker 2: in the butt. But there's a chunk of Americans who
Speaker 2: fucking hate the TSA, and they hate it because of
Speaker 2: how invasive it is. And it's a little weird if
Speaker 2: you're a regular person, because going through airport security is
Speaker 2: still less invasive than like applying for an apartment, which
Speaker 2: a lot of people do more regularly than they fly,
Speaker 2: or taking a trip to the DMV, which again a
Speaker 2: lot of people do more regularly than they fly. But people,
Speaker 2: you know, with money, upper middle class and rich people,
Speaker 2: that's where you really get most of the hate from
Speaker 2: the TSA. Now, obviously there's some from principled libertarians, and
Speaker 2: I tend to think they have a point there, but
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people who really hate the TSA
Speaker 2: specifically because it's kind of the only law enforcement friction
Speaker 2: they deal with on a day to day basis. You know,
Speaker 2: they live in a neighbor hood where they're not getting
Speaker 2: pulled over. You know, the cops their job is not
Speaker 2: to fuck with the people who have money, So the
Speaker 2: only time they're going to get padded down and deal
Speaker 2: with that thing that is a pretty common experience for
Speaker 2: Americans and a lot of cities is when they go
Speaker 2: through the airport. When they fly, and they also fly
Speaker 2: often because they have more money. So I find myself
Speaker 2: in this interesting position when reporting on the TSA of
Speaker 2: there's real abuses there, there's a lot of real threats there.
Speaker 2: The fact that they do get so much up in
Speaker 2: our business and that we've normalized it is an issue.
Speaker 2: And at the same time, like I always know when
Speaker 2: I do something like this, the people who get angriest
Speaker 2: about whatever I write about the TSA are going to
Speaker 2: be the worst pieces of shit in the country. So
Speaker 2: it's a fun balancing act. Now, obviously, as I'm trying
Speaker 2: not to gloss over, there are some really good reasons
Speaker 2: to be pissed at the TSA, like this twenty fifteen
Speaker 2: story from Denver of several agents who were caught running
Speaker 2: a groping scam. Basically, one female crew member would point
Speaker 2: out the men that she found attractive, and a colleague
Speaker 2: would signal that person out for a pat down, and
Speaker 2: they basically say, like, oh, it's alerting something around your
Speaker 2: growing or inner thighs, so that like she could bottle them. Essentially,
Speaker 2: Now these people got fired. The TSA went after them
Speaker 2: when they got caught, but who knows how many people
Speaker 2: they groped in the interim period. Video in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three caught TSA agents at Miami International Airport stealing from
Speaker 2: passenger bags in the security lines. There's like footage of it. Obviously,
Speaker 2: the people who do this are going to be very,
Speaker 2: very stupid, because, like you know, as a tsagent, there's
Speaker 2: cameras all over the place. You're in the fucking TSA,
Speaker 2: and the video is just this guy like reaching his
Speaker 2: hand into a bag pulling out cash. It's not hard
Speaker 2: to find headlines that are similar though, going back about
Speaker 2: as long as the TSA has existed, what interests me
Speaker 2: more are the massive violations of privacy and the potential
Speaker 2: involvement of the TSA and their normalization of those invasions
Speaker 2: of privacy has in the expansion of the survey state.
Speaker 2: So this year at CEES twenty twenty four, when we
Speaker 2: found out the TSA had a booth and they were
Speaker 2: there to talk about their new facial recognition scanners, Garrison
Speaker 2: and I had to go check it out, and the
Speaker 2: interview that we conducted is going to kind of be
Speaker 2: the heart of this episode, but I wanted to get
Speaker 2: over a little bit more of a preamble first, So
Speaker 2: the TSA started testing facial recognition scanners on a voluntary
Speaker 2: basis at sixteen domestic airports, and I think twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two they expanded it to twenty five airports or so
Speaker 2: last year twenty twenty three, they are in twenty seven now,
Speaker 2: according to what we were told by a representative, and
Speaker 2: the goal is for this technology to go nationwide. Obviously,
Speaker 2: not everyone is thrilled with that idea. And I'm going
Speaker 2: to quote from a June twenty twenty three article on
Speaker 2: CBS News. Five US senators sent a letter demanding the
Speaker 2: TSA halt the program. You don't have to compromise people's
Speaker 2: biometric security in order to provide physical security at airports,
Speaker 2: said Senor ed Marky. Pokowski, who is the TSA representative,
Speaker 2: says he agrees with senators and that he wants to
Speaker 2: protect privacy for every passenger. I want to deploy technology
Speaker 2: that's accurate and doesn't disadvantage anybody. Privacy advocates worry about
Speaker 2: the lack of regulations around facial recognition and its tendency
Speaker 2: to be less accurate with people of color. Most images
Speaker 2: are deleted after use, but some information is encrypted and retained.
Speaker 2: For up to twenty four months as part of the
Speaker 2: ongoing review of how the technology performs. What's left out
Speaker 2: of that article is that the TSA is also allowed
Speaker 2: to maintain biometric data taken from non citizens people entering
Speaker 2: the country from foreign countries, migrants and the like, and
Speaker 2: they're able to keep that and share it. It's kind
Speaker 2: of unclear the extent of that, but they're not bound
Speaker 2: by the same rules with those people that they are
Speaker 2: for citizens. And there are other issues as well, as
Speaker 2: we'll get into. So Garrison and I were with excited
Speaker 2: to have a chance to chat with a TSA representative.
Speaker 2: This guy was less excited to see us, and we
Speaker 2: will get into that story, but before we do, it's
Speaker 2: time for an ad break and we're back. So Garrison
Speaker 2: and I show up at the CEES booth and it's
Speaker 2: kind of a small one. You might imagine it's about
Speaker 2: the size of like three normal office cubicles. Maybe there's
Speaker 2: a couple of tables. There's like a little podium thing
Speaker 2: in the front that's got their logo on it. They
Speaker 2: have some stickers, including one that's like it's like peanut
Speaker 2: butter is a liquid and it's a cartoon of peanut butter,
Speaker 2: which I was informed when I commented on it by
Speaker 2: one of the TSA people that yes, peanut butter is
Speaker 2: a liquid, which is one of those things that it's
Speaker 2: both absurd and also like, well, actually, I don't know
Speaker 2: how else you'd categorize peanut butter if you're the TSA.
Speaker 2: So I guess it's something I can't have much of
Speaker 2: an issue with cream. But is a cream different from
Speaker 2: a liquid? I don't know. That's for the philosopher to decide.
Speaker 2: So Garrison and I come up to this booth and
Speaker 2: there's a guy standing behind the pode. I mean, the
Speaker 2: way stuff works at CEES is you have generally a
Speaker 2: mix of actual officers from the company. Sometimes it'll be
Speaker 2: like a CEO or an executive in the case of
Speaker 2: a smaller company. Other times it'll be regular employees or
Speaker 2: like engineers and stuff who can answer technical questions, and
Speaker 2: then a bunch of Most of the people that you
Speaker 2: talk to are like pr reps. I don't know who
Speaker 2: the guy was that was at the booth when we
Speaker 2: first showed up, because as soon as we said we
Speaker 2: wanted to talk about their facial recognition cameras he saw
Speaker 2: were media, and he instantly did the pr equivalent of
Speaker 2: throwing his buddy on a grenade. He like backed off.
Speaker 2: He was like, let me get something for you. He
Speaker 2: pulled his coworker over and then he fucking vanished, And
Speaker 2: I'm going to play you a little bit of audio
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 3: We're interested in what you have here in terms of
Speaker 3: facial recognition.
Speaker 4: It's the cat too right over there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, what are you saying because I know
Speaker 3: right now, like if you've got pre check or oh gosh,
Speaker 3: what's the other one the independent company.
Speaker 4: That were live on a live interview?
Speaker 3: Now, I thought, so, I mean he came up to
Speaker 3: ask to talk to a TSA.
Speaker 4: Okay, sure then yeah, sure, hang on just a second.
Speaker 2: So the guy we found ourselves in front of was
Speaker 2: our Carter Langston, who is actually the press secretary of
Speaker 2: the TSA, and by god, I don't know if I've
Speaker 2: ever seen a man less happy to see me. Eventually
Speaker 2: we started talking, and I have to give Carter credit
Speaker 2: for professionalism. His eyes said I despise you both on principle,
Speaker 2: and I am enraged to be doing this, But his
Speaker 2: voice remained calm, even and his responses were to be
Speaker 2: quite honest, pretty polished.
Speaker 3: I'm kind of interested in sort of how you see
Speaker 3: this altering the way we do air travel over the
Speaker 3: next five ten years, right because obviously, right now people
Speaker 3: are using facial recognition if they have pre check or
Speaker 3: they have I'm spacing the name, but you know the
Speaker 3: independent company that does get you pass the line and
Speaker 3: stuff like they do like facial recognition when you are
Speaker 3: in the airport. Is this something that you see as
Speaker 3: coming more broadly to like everybody going through security in the.
Speaker 4: Future, eventually, eventually.
Speaker 5: So right now it's at twenty seven participating airports, and
Speaker 5: it's not at every single we call them travel.
Speaker 4: Document Checker podiums.
Speaker 5: It's not at every single checker Travel Document checkerdum TDC
Speaker 5: for sure, but it is growing and becoming We're deploying
Speaker 5: more and more as as funding becomes available for we're
Speaker 5: using facial recognition to identify passengers. It's a significant.
Speaker 4: Improvement over the.
Speaker 5: Previous way we were identifying passengers, just with the human interaction,
Speaker 5: looking at an high decredidential and looking at it based
Speaker 5: on what that individual knows about the fifty states and
Speaker 5: territories and how they could what their credentials look like
Speaker 5: the technology actually takes that over and does a much
Speaker 5: better job of evalidating the authenticity of that ID. And
Speaker 5: then the facial recognition component with a picture still image,
Speaker 5: taking a picture of the passenger standing in front of
Speaker 5: the travel document checker podium and then matching that picture
Speaker 5: of that person standing there live against the credential photo
Speaker 5: and making the match that way, so we know that
Speaker 5: the credential is valid, it's it's true, it's accurate. We
Speaker 5: know that the person standing there is also the person
Speaker 5: on the credential. We can verify the boarding status and
Speaker 5: the screening status of that individual and can provide them
Speaker 5: with where they should go next for their screening because
Speaker 5: the officer is able to discern based on all of
Speaker 5: the information provided at the back end of the monitor
Speaker 5: that they reviewed.
Speaker 4: They can see all of those.
Speaker 5: Items have been checked, there's a boarding status, and there's
Speaker 5: a screening status, and then just tells the passenger where
Speaker 5: to go to follow up for screening.
Speaker 3: So I'm interested in how someone how someone becomes basically
Speaker 3: enrolled in this right because my assumption is at this point,
Speaker 3: just the picture you get when you're getting your driver's
Speaker 3: license or your state ID from the DMV is not
Speaker 3: sufficient for a facial recognition system, right, simply having the
Speaker 3: picture in the government space. You need to have somebody
Speaker 3: to like get their face scaled and their irises scand
Speaker 3: or something like that in order to have them in
Speaker 3: the system.
Speaker 4: Right, it's not in the system at all.
Speaker 5: So with the way we're rolling these out at airports
Speaker 5: and check blinds is once a passenger has been identified.
Speaker 4: And that.
Speaker 5: And goes into screening, all of the information that was
Speaker 5: captured is gone. We don't store any of the pictures
Speaker 5: participation right now, it's completely volatile.
Speaker 3: UH.
Speaker 4: Their signage right there at the.
Speaker 5: Checker podium UH to indicate that passengers can opt out,
Speaker 5: they don't have to participate it and all that. All
Speaker 5: it happens at that point is the same officer will
Speaker 5: UH will turn basically over to the alternative process, review
Speaker 5: the ID, review the boarding pass and allow the passenger.
Speaker 4: To continue too easy.
Speaker 5: So if you don't lose their place in line, and
Speaker 5: they don't, they're not delayed in any way from getting
Speaker 5: screen But.
Speaker 3: In terms of like the people who choose to use it, right,
Speaker 3: So if you if you're in this system, is it
Speaker 3: literally just comparing your face to the face on the
Speaker 3: I D. You're not like enrolled separately the way you
Speaker 3: are if you are in like pre check or somewhere.
Speaker 4: Okay, No, it's not.
Speaker 5: There's not a database associated mats and so no, that's
Speaker 5: that's not our use. Now, some of the airlines have
Speaker 5: partnered with us, they saw benefit in it, and they're
Speaker 5: using similar technology for backdrop for their Frequent Flyer Miles
Speaker 5: program participants. So that is there's a database associated with
Speaker 5: that obviously, and so those.
Speaker 4: Passengers are company.
Speaker 5: Have an entirely different experience. But the way that we're
Speaker 5: using it at the checkpoint, as I just said, for
Speaker 5: identity verification.
Speaker 2: God n you caught that right how he says participation
Speaker 2: is voluntary right now. Well, I hadn't come across this
Speaker 2: information at the time, but afterwards I read a fascinating
Speaker 2: Washington Post article from last summer about Portland Senator Jeff Murkley.
Speaker 2: Jeff Murkley says that when he was trying to make
Speaker 2: a flight at Reagan International Airport, he was told that
Speaker 2: if he didn't verify his ID via face scanner, he
Speaker 2: would face a significant delay. Quote from the article. There
Speaker 2: was no delay, the spokeswoman said the senator showed his
Speaker 2: photo ID to the TSA agent in cleared security, so
Speaker 2: basically he was lied to. Somebody lied and said, you're
Speaker 2: going to if you don't want to like delayed and
Speaker 2: maybe miss your flight, you have to submit to a
Speaker 2: face scan, which is one of the things that privacy
Speaker 2: advocates were worried about from the beginning. But you know what,
Speaker 2: privacy advocates aren't worried about the products and services that
Speaker 2: support this podcast and we're back, So I think when
Speaker 2: it gets right down to it, the silliest part of
Speaker 2: all of this to me is that the TSA isn't
Speaker 2: even claiming they need to run faces through like some
Speaker 2: futuristic database of terrorists, right like they want to scan
Speaker 2: our faces so they know if this like bad guy
Speaker 2: they're tracking is in the airport in disguised using a
Speaker 2: fake passport or something that's not actually what it does.
Speaker 2: Facial recognition the TSA is using right now at least
Speaker 2: just takes the place of the TSA guy. You hand
Speaker 2: your ID before you go put your shit in bins,
Speaker 2: right like, you know, you go up and before you
Speaker 2: can go take your stuff out of your bags and
Speaker 2: put it in those bins. You hand a guy your license,
Speaker 2: sometimes your license and boarding pass, he looks at it
Speaker 2: in your face. If you wear at a mask, he
Speaker 2: tolls you to take it down for a second and
Speaker 2: then he lets you go in. Right, that's what the
Speaker 2: facial recognition scanners are actually doing here. That Washington Post
Speaker 2: article also cites an anti facial recognition activist, Tijuana Petty,
Speaker 2: who says that she was told by a TSA agent
Speaker 2: at the same airport, Reagan, that undergoing facial recognition scanning
Speaker 2: was not optional. So people are already being told this
Speaker 2: is a requirement. And obviously, as a spoiler for where
Speaker 2: this goes, the bigger, deeper question is like how long
Speaker 2: is that going to be the case?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: So you know that's kind of the big concern, right,
Speaker 2: is that they're saying it's optional now, it obviously won't
Speaker 2: be forever, and some people are just going to be
Speaker 2: told they don't have a choice, Like that's kind of bullying,
Speaker 2: strong arming people, threatening that they'll miss their flight if
Speaker 2: they don't submit to it, which makes me extra suspicious
Speaker 2: about their data retention. Right, And that is the question
Speaker 2: we asked as the interview went on, where is the TSAs?
Speaker 2: But where is the TSA's biometric data or really, where
Speaker 2: is passenger biometric data actually going to go once the
Speaker 2: TSA has it?
Speaker 6: In terms of the just information storage is there? I
Speaker 6: know I've been seeing more of these like signs the
Speaker 6: more that I travel. I do it decent traveling for
Speaker 6: these for these sorts of systems. And I'm curious with
Speaker 6: how this works for non US citizens if because I
Speaker 6: know there's there's certain at least in some of the
Speaker 6: technology that's being used by customers of border patrol. They
Speaker 6: do store images captured of non US citizens for a
Speaker 6: certain time period.
Speaker 2: They do take pictures.
Speaker 6: Of US citizens when entering the country, and lots of
Speaker 6: lots of airports. Are are these two systems interacting at all?
Speaker 6: Or is the TSA system and customers about customs and
Speaker 6: voter patrol system more separated?
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, I can't speak for Customs and
Speaker 5: Border protection, but I can tell you that we're we
Speaker 5: have two very different use cases. So their use case
Speaker 5: is very much oriented in the customs arena, and then
Speaker 5: ours is as I just.
Speaker 4: Mentioned, at the checkpoint.
Speaker 5: And solely for the identity verification and if an international
Speaker 5: passenger comes in with a credential.
Speaker 4: That identifies them.
Speaker 5: Then the unit would obviously accept that credential.
Speaker 4: It's a photo, it's a photo credential.
Speaker 5: So again, all that the system would do is validay
Speaker 5: that that person on that credential is also the same
Speaker 5: person that's standing right there in front of the travel
Speaker 5: document checker.
Speaker 2: Okay, most of you are probably aware of this, but
Speaker 2: the TSA actually does not have a good record of
Speaker 2: protecting private data. Now this is not old Man Robert
Speaker 2: being a libertarian, it's just documented history. The TSA INDI
Speaker 2: claimed their full body scanners, which took what are essentially
Speaker 2: naked pictures of passengers, never stored photos and couldn't transmit them.
Speaker 2: But in twenty ten this was revealed to be a
Speaker 2: lie when we gained access to documents that included technical
Speaker 2: specifications and vendor contracts which indicated the TSA required vendors
Speaker 2: of these scanners to provide equipment that can store and
Speaker 2: send images of screen passengers. Now this was supposed to
Speaker 2: only be in testing mode, but if it can store
Speaker 2: and send images of screened passengers, it can store and
Speaker 2: send images of screened passengers. In twenty twelve, a former
Speaker 2: TSA agent accused his coworkers of saving nude body images
Speaker 2: of passengers from the body scanner and making fun of
Speaker 2: them in back rooms. He said that safeguards were put
Speaker 2: in place to ensure the agents manning the scanners never
Speaker 2: saw the people they were scanning outside of the scanner,
Speaker 2: but that these policies were frequently violated. Basically, every privacy
Speaker 2: policy they had was frequently violated by agents so that
Speaker 2: they could make fun of people's dicks. Right, that's the story.
Speaker 2: The TSA retired its old scanners the next year, replacing
Speaker 2: them with a device that showed less detail and particularly
Speaker 2: provided agents with less clear looks at people's dongs. In
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, a TSA agent in Minneapolis was accused
Speaker 2: by airport police of taking dozens of photos of young
Speaker 2: women going through flight screening. The TSA's record here, both
Speaker 2: in terms of the agency itself and in terms of
Speaker 2: its employees, is certainly not worse than numerous police departments
Speaker 2: right or the FBI. This is something to keep in mind.
Speaker 2: As frustrating as all this stuff is, literally every local
Speaker 2: and city law enforcement agency has worse cases, and by gods,
Speaker 2: so do the FEDS could make a case that as
Speaker 2: frustrating as a lot of this is the TSA is
Speaker 2: less of a threat to privacy than most other federal
Speaker 2: law enforcement agencies. But that's beside the point. For one thing,
Speaker 2: normalizing facial recognition technology in the airports is a step
Speaker 2: towards normalizing it everywhere. The data that is gathered will
Speaker 2: not always be deleted, and more to the point, there's
Speaker 2: no way to know that the system isn't going to
Speaker 2: expand in directions that we all find deeply uncomfortable as
Speaker 2: it goes on. That's why you kind of have to
Speaker 2: nip this stuff in the bud, especially since they're not
Speaker 2: really promising extra security here. When you look at the
Speaker 2: scandals of the TSA, a lot of it has to
Speaker 2: do with the fact that they'll be getting tested by
Speaker 2: some other law enforcement agency to see if they can
Speaker 2: sneak shit through, right, and the TSAO let a bunch
Speaker 2: of guns or a fake bomb or whatever through because
Speaker 2: people aren't paying attention. Facial scanners aren't going to catch that,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of unclear to me what they are
Speaker 2: going to catch. My other bigger issue is that even
Speaker 2: though they say they're going to throw away biometric data,
Speaker 2: they're not going to keep it more than twenty four
Speaker 2: hours outside of special situations, which they do kind of
Speaker 2: leave themselves an end there. The fact that they say
Speaker 2: they're deleting this stuff doesn't mean they are going to
Speaker 2: delete that stuff. And I brought up this troubling history
Speaker 2: of lack of respect for privacy, violations of privacy by
Speaker 2: TSA agents in the past within the context of this
Speaker 2: new system. And I want to play Carter's answer for you.
Speaker 3: I am curious. You know there were a couple five
Speaker 3: or six years a couple of cases stories that grew
Speaker 3: up of pictures images of passengers who were on the
Speaker 3: body scanners being shared, right like that's there were for
Speaker 3: a couple of scandals about that. Had that influenced your
Speaker 3: attitudes on the data attention policy that should exist for
Speaker 3: the facial recognition of.
Speaker 5: This So first tell you that we follow the National
Speaker 5: Institute of National Institute of Standards and Technology their guidelines
Speaker 5: and standards to a tu Not only that we publish
Speaker 5: online our privacy impact assessments, so there are we're very
Speaker 5: transparent in our use of this technology, how we're using it,
Speaker 5: what we're using it for. And again it's completely voluntary.
Speaker 5: Nothing is stored similar and it's simply.
Speaker 4: Which is really the Lynch Transportation security Yeah, I mean
Speaker 4: we've got to know that was and who.
Speaker 5: We're Vegas going mind into the secure area of an
Speaker 5: airpoilt is in fact it's a person that.
Speaker 4: They say that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's more or less how the conversation ended.
Speaker 2: Carter was very happy to see us go, and I
Speaker 2: don't think Garrison or I were particularly surprised by anything
Speaker 2: we heard, but I did find it interesting that he
Speaker 2: kind of confirmed the goal is eventually for this to
Speaker 2: not just be everywhere, but be something that you can't
Speaker 2: opt out of. And I do partly wonder how much
Speaker 2: of that is them looking for a way to get
Speaker 2: more data on people, maybe even to share to other
Speaker 2: law enforcement agencies, and how much of that is kind
Speaker 2: of the same reason all a lot of you know,
Speaker 2: AI style technology and kind of facial recognition does sort
Speaker 2: of fall under that umbrella. If you're going to have
Speaker 2: a general intelligence, one thing it has to be able
Speaker 2: to do is recognize people's faces. So it is a
Speaker 2: piece of that and I think that, just like a
Speaker 2: lot of other applications of that kind of technology, are
Speaker 2: inevitably used to cut workforces. That's kind of probably the
Speaker 2: chief thing the TSA is looking to use it to do. Right,
Speaker 2: If you can replace the guy who has to look
Speaker 2: at your idea, or at least most of them, with
Speaker 2: facial recognition scanners that do the same thing, then you
Speaker 2: can save on your budget. Right now. The downside of that,
Speaker 2: maybe to us. The upside is it could be faster.
Speaker 2: The downside, of course, is there's a really good chance
Speaker 2: it won't be. The robot will be even more racist
Speaker 2: than an ESA agent might be. You know, it's one
Speaker 2: less chance to deal with a human with whom you
Speaker 2: might be able to talk something through. Anyway. Well, I'll
Speaker 2: see where this goes, but for today, this has been
Speaker 2: it could happen here, and I have been Robert Evans.
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