The Trump administration is engaging in regulatory overreach that would force all travelers, regardless of whether they are U.S. citizens or not, to submit a face scan in order to be able to enter an airplane. They intend to enact the new regulation in 2020.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intends to implement the invasive policy in July 2020. The administration hopes the new policy will make it easier to track and profile travelers as they come into and leave the nation. This is being implemented under the guise of stopping illegal immigration.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is crying foul at this proposal, believing that it is a blatant infringement upon the Bill of Rights.
“Time and again, the government told the public and members of Congress that U.S. citizens would not be required to submit to this intrusive surveillance technology as a condition of traveling,” said Jay Stanley, an ACLU senior policy analyst.
“This new notice suggests that the government is reneging on what was already an insufficient promise,” he added.
Before the regulation is ultimately implemented, the public is expected to have a 30-60 day window to submit their objections. However, the wheels are already in motion as the U.S. Customs and Border Protection has already finished the pilot program to gain photographs as well as fingerprints from travelers.
“Travelers, including U.S. citizens, should not have to submit to invasive biometric scans simply as a condition of exercising their constitutional right to travel. The government’s insistence on hurtling forward with a large-scale deployment of this powerful surveillance technology raises profound privacy concerns,” Stanley said.
Stanley references a massive data breach that jeopardized nearly 100,000 images of travelers and license plates in June as a reason why this invasive measure should be scrapped by the administration. He believes that the feds “cannot be trusted” with this power, and Congress should intervene to stop the overreach before it can have disastrous consequences.
The DHS expects to have biometric data on close to 260 million people by the year 2022, as the Orwellian nightmare slowly but surely becomes an inescapable reality. The federal databases are filling up with information that can be used for the purposes of total government control.
DHS ominously claims that “the only way for an individual to ensure he or she is not subject to collection of biometric information when traveling internationally is to refrain from traveling.”
Although President Trump promised to drain the swamp when he was put into the White House, he has done nothing to stop the supremacy of the surveillance state.
