from Hacker News

Ask HN: What are the privacy implications in signing up for CLEAR

by akouri on 9/17/21, 7:23 PM with 1 comments

Many airports now allow you to bypass the TSA line with identity verification by CLEAR. Before giving up my retina scans, thumb prints, and facial signature… I wanted to get this community’s opinion on the trade offs to having this type of data stored in a database somewhere…

  • by bradknowles on 9/18/21, 5:20 AM

    You’re giving your fingerprints, retina scans, and maybe also face scan information, to an untrusted company that could easily be broken into, just like all the others. You think having your credit card details compromised is bad? At least you can change your credit card number….

    What do you think?

    In Austin, Clear doesn’t really give you any advantages over TSA Pre. They are two separate and competing programs from different organizations, and have different standards of identification, along with different benefits.

    I can’t speak for any other locations, but all the places I have seen Clear, it was just different from TSA Pre and not better, nor did it allow you to skip the scanning of your carryon luggage, allow you to skip taking off your shoes, etc….

    Because my wife used to fly a lot, she basically forced me to sign up for both TSA Pre and for Clear, because she really, really hates waiting in lines. So, those programs achieved their goals — they got my biometrics, by creating a false security threat that lead to incredibly long lines.

    And now we don’t fly anywhere, ever. But they’ve still got all my biometrics.

    Even when I worked for the Defense Information Systems Agency and had a TS/SCI clearance, at that point no one had recorded my retina scans. OPM had my fingerprints, and they got compromised by the Chinese, but they didn’t have my retina prints. Clear does.