Dr Joy Buolamwini and AJL Release Report on TSA’s Facial Recognition Technology
Dr Joy Buolamwini and the Algorithmic Justice League Urge TSA to Halt Deployment of Facial Recognition Technology Following 2-Year Study Finding Concerning Treatment of Travelers
29 July 2025 - The Algorithmic Justice League (AJL), a leader in advocating for ethical and accountable AI, has released a new report based on the accounts of hundreds of travelers over the course of a two-year study following the use of facial recognition technology (FRT) by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The concluding results found that 99% of travelers did not receive verbal notice of their right to opt out while half of travelers did not report seeing signage. Many of those who elected to opt out experienced negative treatment by TSA officers as a result.
The report, which accounts for 420 scorecards submitted by domestic travelers across 91 airports between March 2024 to June 2025, found that 67% of travelers who decided to opt out of the FRT scan reported experiencing verbal abuse, public shaming, and perceived additional scrutiny.
The findings of AJL align with recent statements from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), which reviewed the use of facial verification (1:1 matching at TSA Security Checkpoints) and facial identification (1:N matching at TSA PreCheck Touchless ID and Boarding Gates), and raises concerns about individual and collective privacy regarding sensitive biometric information.
“The findings show that the majority of travelers experience TSA’s facial recognition experiment as voluntary, and it has been rolled out without giving people a true choice,” says AJL founder Dr. Joy Buolamwini, Fellow of the Accelerator Fellowship Programme of the Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford, and a global leader in AI ethics. “We recommend TSA halts the experiment to give time for public deliberation. Giving up valuable face data should not be the price to fly. And if facial surveillance technologies become normalized at airports, it invites wider use in other domains of life, including stores, schools, and even hospitals.”
As TSA expands the technology to over 430 domestic airports, AJL highlights the urgent need to halt TSA’s use of facial recognition to allow for public discourse and to address the concerns raised by the traveling public, civil society organizations, bipartisan elected officials, and the government’s own Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
Additional key metrics from the report include:
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74% of respondents did not receive notice about the use of TSA facial recognition;
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56% of those surveyed reported not seeing opt-out information or signage about TSA’s use of FRTs;
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87% of travelers during the operational period voiced concerns about the program related to minors being scanned, surveillance risks, and more.
AJL remains dedicated to exposing AI harms and equipping individuals with the necessary knowledge to make decisions regarding their data privacy. Dr Buolamwini is available to discuss AJL’s latest efforts, including the Fly to Comply campaign, which offers a detailed examination of the surveillance infrastructure, data security, and treatment of travelers from TSA’s facial recognition program.
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About The Algorithmic Justice League:
AJL’s mission is to raise public awareness about the impacts of AI, equip advocates with resources to bolster campaigns, build the voice and choice of the most impacted communities, and galvanize researchers, policymakers, and industry practitioners to prevent AI harms.
About the Accelerator Fellowship Programme of the Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford:
The Accelerator Fellowship Programme hosted by the University of Oxford’s Institute for Ethics in AI, is a pioneering initiative addressing the ethical challenges posed by AI technologies. As AI continues to reshape society, the programme's mission is to build an AI ethics hub that brings together people from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, in order to seek innovative solutions to the ethical challenges of AI. The Institute for Ethics in AI brings together world-leading philosophers and other experts in the humanities with the technical developers and users of AI in academia, business and government. The ethics and governance of AI is an exceptionally vibrant area of research at Oxford University and the Institute is an opportunity to take a bold leap forward from this platform. The Institute is part of the Philosophy Faculty at the University of Oxford.
