Over the next three years, airports plan to phase out boarding passes and passports. Instead we will all board using biometric data, linked to facial recognition software. This will become the only option for air travel.
What could possibly go wrong? Just about everything.
Thus far, privacy concerns are raising the most alarms. But the bigger problem is that it simply won’t work as advertised. Both governments and the private sector have a track record of rolling out “high tech” and “AI” solutions that aren’t ready for primetime.
They will spend ten years working out the glitches in the facial recognition software. Along the way, they’ll create numerous lapses in security for terrorists and other criminals to exploit.
This will also cut down on air travel. Certain demographics—elderly travelers, techno-skeptics, and privacy zealots—will simply refuse to travel under this new Rube Goldberg of a system.
There is one bit of good news, however. The new system will all be implemented and administered by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a United Nations body. Therefore, the odds are high that it will be such a fiasco from the get-go, that it will never go live. The world’s air travelers should be so lucky.
-ET