After losing a fight on government surveillance in April, a left-right coalition of privacy hawks in the Senate is onto the next privacy battle: facial recognition technology in airports.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Transportation Security Administration’s facial recognition technology are vastly different with completely unrelated goals. TSA emphasized to NOTUS that their facial recognition software is never used for surveillance or law enforcement and that it is optional for travelers.
But in Congress, the two have fallen under the same mantle, taken up by the emerging, informal caucus of civil libertarians increasingly skittish about the potential for government surveillance of private residents — for any purpose.