Paper Title

-- By ValeriaVouterakou - 02 Dec 2024

The Evolution of Surveillance in Travel: From Paper Trails to Digital Footprints

Several years ago, during a family trip to Asia, I encountered an unfamiliar technological advancement at the airport: facial recognition machines. At the time, this innovation was largely absent in Europe. As a teenager, I instinctively resisted such an act of submission which I thought of at the time as a violation of my privacy. My initial reaction was ultimately trumped by the impatience of my parents and the intimidating authority that the board control officer exerted on me. Reflecting on this experience today, what once seemed unsettling and intrusive, has since become a standard feature of international travel and a norm that travellers have accepted at face value raising important questions about privacy considerations. This paper seeks to examine the role of surveillance in travel with a particular focus on the legal and ethical dimensions of privacy as well as a possible solution to address surveillance concerns.

The History of Travel Surveillance

The inception of the passport dates back to the 15th century under the reign of King Henry V of England which was designed to grant his subjects passage in and out of foreign land for the purpose of their negotiations , with the concept of a standardized global passport system emerging centuries later in the aftermath of World War I, to facilitate controlled international travel. Over the years, new security measures have been introduced including but not limited to border control customs via physical checkpoints, passenger name record systems (with onward sharing with government authorities) and more thorough passenger background checks (via Advanced Passenger Information System). During the Cold War, political tensions resulted in heightened monitoring with the use of visas and stamps as tools of tracking movement. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks there was a security paradigm shift which resulted in the development of databases used by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and biometrics in airports. Transitioning to the 21st century, the world saw the introduction of e-passports, facial recognition and AI driven border checks. Strict surveillance measures were also introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic which included health declarations, contact tracing systems, thermal scanning and monitoring systems to identify symptomatic travellers and excessive data sharing facilitated by International Air Transport Association (IATA). China introduced a QR-based health code system for domestic travel assigning colour codes to its citizens based on each individual citizen’s health risk. The COVID-19 pandemic culminated in a dystopian reality whereby most governments time and time again proved that they had no regard for their people’s fundamental rights to privacy, freedom of choice and freedom of movement. This has led to a society where surveillance has become omnipresent and individual autonomy is systematically diminished shifting the balance of power irrevocable toward the authorities.---++++ Subsub 1

Overview of Legal Framework

The US legal framework leans towards robust data collection for security purposes. More specifically, the Privacy Act of 1974 controls the collection, use and disclosure of personal data by federal agencies and the REAL ID Act 2005 outlines the security standards to be met to board a commercial flight in the United States. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) which has also been enacted by other US states governs data protection in the travel industry. Agencies and airline carriers are obligated to disclose the categories of personal data they collect, the purpose of collection and whether such data is disseminated to third parties. Notwithstanding the disclosure and transparency requirements under the CCPA, there are exceptions to those legal obligations, including when the airlines are not obligated to seek express consent from the passengers to provide information to the government for security, customs or immigration purposes. In a similar manner, the EU has implemented the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 2016 which sets out the legal landscape of data privacy in relation to the processing of any personal data of EU residents. While the GDPR imposes stricter rules on how traveller data is used through data minimisation processes, adequate safeguards in relation to sharing personal data with non-EU countries, who must offer at least the same or equivalent privacy protections, and a traveller’s right to delete the data or object to certain uses of such data. Nevertheless, air carriers and travel agents may still be required to share such personal information with governments for security or immigration purposes.

A New World

This discussion prompts the question as to whether the legal framework is adequate and my conclusion is in the negativity. While this paper does not purport to explore the significance of security and counterterrorism measures, which is indisputable, what it does propose is adopting a new lens through which the surveillance of travelling can be reduced rather than incrementally intensified in the years to come. While an outright relaxation of the privacy regulations and laws seems unachievable, this paper proposes to shift the attention to the airline carriers. The establishment of minimal surveillance air carriers which would only request the legally required minimum of personal information required for passengers might seek to address this problem. Such airlines would opt out of TSA prechecks, would refrain from data sharing with third parties, facial recognition and would offer anonymous payment options and no WIFI monitoring during flights. Such privacy-friendly travel systems would at first glance seem costly, providing no incentive for any airline to adopt such measures but ultimately if enough people recognised the value of their freedom of choice, they could drive up demand for low-surveillance systems and that demand can in turn pressure the system to reform its regulatory framework to balance security with privacy. By adopting essential security measures while minimizing privacy intrusions we can metamorphose the system into a world where freedom of movement is a given and not a self-earned right that travellers must justify or defend at every ‘checkpoint’ of their life.

• #Set ALLOWTOPICVIEW = TWikiAdminGroup, ValeriaVouterakou
• #Set DENYTOPICVIEW = TWikiGuest

Note: TWiki has strict formatting rules for preference declarations. Make sure you preserve the three spaces, asterisk, and extra space at the beginning of these lines. If you wish to give access to any other users simply add them to the comma separated ALLOWTOPICVIEW list.