Senators Marshall, Merkley Urge Oversight of TSA’s Unchecked Use of Facial Recognition Technology at Airports Nationwide

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. joined Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and a bipartisan group of Senators to sound the alarm on the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) facial recognition regime in airports across the United States.

Senators Marshall and Merkley co-led this effort with Senators John Kennedy (R-LA), Edward J. Markey (D-MA), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) to urge a thorough investigation by U.S. Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari into the TSA’s collection of facial biometric data. Their letter comes as a record-breaking number of Americans are expected to travel this holiday season, meaning more Americans than ever before may have their faces scanned at the airport.

“This technology will soon be in use at hundreds of major and mid-size airports without an independent evaluation of the technology’s precision or an audit of whether there are sufficient safeguards in place to protect passenger privacy,” the senators wrote. “TSA reportedly plans to introduce next-generation credential authentication technology (CAT) equipped with facial recognition at over 430 airports nationwide. Yet the agency already deploys non-facial recognition devices, known as CAT-1 scanners, which are capable of determining if identification documents are fraudulent. TSA has not provided Congress with evidence that facial recognition technology is necessary to catch fraudulent documents, decrease wait times at security checkpoints, or stop terrorists from boarding airplanes.”

“Additionally, despite promising lawmakers and the public that this technology is not mandatory, TSA has stated its intent to expand this technology beyond the security checkpoint and make it mandatory in the future. In April 2023, TSA Administrator Pekoske admitted at the South by Southwest Conference that ‘we will get to the point where we will require biometrics across the board.’ If that happens, this program could become one of the largest federal surveillance databases overnight without authorization from Congress,” the senators stressed.

The full letter can be read below.

BACKGROUND: 

Senator Marshall has been an outspoken and longtime leader in sounding the alarm on the TSA’s use of facial recognition technology. 

In 2023, Senator Marshall teamed up with Senator Merkley to introduce the Traveler Privacy Protection Act, which would empower travelers in the United States with control over their privacy by banning facial recognition technology and collecting facial biometric data by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in U.S. airports. 

Earlier this year, Senator Marshall joined a bipartisan group of 13 Senate colleagues in a letter to Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to urge them to take up this privacy issue in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Reauthorization Act.