Pinellas airport may use face-scanning program

The technology once assailed for its use in Ybor City might soon be at the St. Petersburg-Clearwater airport.

By LISA GREENE
© St. Petersburg Times,
published November 15, 2001

Passengers at St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport soon could have their faces compared to those of terrorists.

Pinellas County officials are talking about using the computer face-scanning program that became famous from the Super Bowl and on Ybor City streets to monitor passengers.

"I foresee a day when nobody's going to get on an airplane without looking into a camera and having their picture checked against certain databases," Sheriff Everett Rice said Wednesday afternoon. "It's very important we get a system like this at the airport as soon as possible."

Civil liberties advocates argue that the face recognition technology invades people's privacy without helping police arrest criminals. Scanning selected airport passengers is less intrusive than scanning vast Ybor City crowds, but still a bad idea, said an official with the American Civil Liberties Union.

"The ACLU wants people to be safe, but we think it's possible to be both safe and free," said Mike Pheneger, secretary of the ACLU in Florida and a retired Army intelligence colonel.

Since Sept. 11, there's been renewed interest in the technology -- and less worry about privacy.

"It's a different day than it was six months ago," said Gay Lancaster, interim county administrator. "Right now, security concerns are elemental."

Even Commissioner John Morroni, who opposed the Super Bowl photos and the recent placing of video cameras on county buses, said he would support face scans at the airport. Commissioners would have to approve using the technology there.

Rice, who received a $3.5-million federal grant last year for a face-scanning program, thought of doing face scans at the airport about three weeks ago. He met Tuesday with Tom Jewsbury, operations director at the county's airport.

Jewsbury said Wednesday that airport officials are intrigued, but he wasn't ready to back the plan.

"We're just looking to see what all the possibilities are," he said.

Rice said he anticipates using the grant money his department already received and working with Viisage Technologies, the company whose lobbying firm helped secure the grant. But Jewsbury said the airport also has asked its security consultant to look at the technology, and might suggest other funding or other companies.

Tampa International Airport officials haven't considered using the cameras. But Louis Miller, executive director of the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority, wouldn't rule them out.

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