Clear wants to scan your face at airports. Privacy experts are worried.

The private security screening company Clear is rolling out facial recognition technology at its expedited airport checkpoints in 2024, replacing the company’s iris-scanning and fingerprint-checking measures. With a presence at more than 50 U.S. airports, Clear’s update is the latest sign in a broader shift toward biometrics in air travel that is raising concerns from some privacy experts and advocates. Clear’s shift to its new screening technology, which the company is calling NextGen Identity Plus, also includes stronger verification of identity documents by comparing them “back to the issuing source,” the company told The Washington Post. Clear said it has been collaborating with the Department of Homeland Security and TSA since 2020 to make these changes. Members who pay $189 a year for a Clear Plus subscription will be moved to the new technology free of charge. Just last year, the Transportation Security Administration also announced it would begin using facial recognition technology in its airport checkpoints. Other face recognition systems, like those used by law enforcement agencies, use photos taken of unidentified people (sometimes without explicit consent) and compares them to a large database in order to find a match. Clear’s system differs, the company told The Post, in that it only compares live snapshots taken of travelers using the designated Clear airport lane to data from their enrollment in NextGen Identity Plus. Moving from iris and fingerprint scanning to facial scanning should help customers get through Clear’s checkpoints faster.<br/>