Inside Clear’s ambitions to manage your identity beyond the airport

The more Clear is able to reach into customers’ lives, the more valuable customer data it can collect. All user interactions and experiences can be tracked, the company’s privacy policy explains. While the policy states that Clear will not sell data and will never share biometric or health information without “express consent,” it also lays out the non-health and non-biometric data that it collects and can use for consumer research and marketing. This includes members’ demographic details, a record of every use of Clear’s various products, and even digital images and videos of the user. Documents obtained by OneZero offer some further detail into what Clear has at least considered doing with customer data: David Gershgorn writes about a 2015 presentation to representatives from Los Angeles International Airport, titled “Identity Dashboard—Valuable Marketing Data,” which “showed off” what the company had collected, including the number of sports games users had attended and with whom, which credit cards they had, their favorite airlines and top destinations, and how often they flew first class or economy. 

Clear representatives emphasized to MIT Technology Review that the company “does not share or sell information without consent,” though they “had nothing to add” in response to a question about whether Clear can or does aggregate data to derive its own marketing insights, a business model popularized by Facebook. “At Clear, privacy and security are job one,” spokesperson Ricardo Quinto wrote in an email. “We are opt-in. We never sell or share our members’ information and utilize a multilayered, best-in-class infosec system that meets the highest standards and compliance requirements.” 

Nevertheless, this influx of customer data is not just good for business; it’s risky for customers. It creates “another attack surface,” Gilliard warns. “This makes us less safe, not more, as a consistent identifier across your entire public and private life is the dream of every hacker, bad actor, and authoritarian.”

A face-based future for some

Today, Clear is in the middle of another major change: replacing its use of iris scans and fingerprints with facial verification in airports—part of “a TSA-required upgrade in identity verification,” a TSA spokesperson wrote in an email to MIT Technology Review. 

For a long time, facial recognition technology “for the highest security purposes” was “not ready for prime time,” Seidman Becker told Swisher and Goode back in 2017. It wasn’t operating with “five nines,” she added—that is, “99.999% from a matching and an accuracy perspective.” But today, facial recognition has “significantly improved” and the company has invested “in enhancing image quality through improved capture, focus, and illumination,” according to Quinto.

 Clear says switching to facial images in airports will also further decrease friction, enabling travelers to verify their identity so effortlessly it’s “almost like you don’t really break stride,” Peddy says. “You walk up, you scan your face. You walk straight to the TSA.” 

The move is part of a broader shift toward facial recognition technology in US travel, bringing the country in line with practices at many international airports. The TSA began expanding facial identification from a few pilot programs this year, while airlines including Delta and United are also introducing face-based boarding, baggage drops, and even lounge access. And the International Air Transport Association, a trade group for the airline industry, is rolling out a “contactless travel” process that will allow passengers to check in, drop off their bags, and board their flights—all without showing either passports or tickets, just their faces. 

NEIL WEBB

Privacy experts worry that relying on faces for identity verification is even riskier than other biometric methods. After all, “it’s a lot easier to scan people’s faces passively than it is to scan irises or take fingerprints,” Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, an outspoken critic of government surveillance and of the TSA’s plans to employ facial verification at airports, said in an email. The point is that once a database of faces is built, it is potentially far more useful for surveillance purposes than, say, fingerprints. “Everyone who values privacy, freedom, and civil rights should be concerned about the increasing, unchecked use of facial recognition technology by corporations and the federal government,” Merkley wrote.