TSA issues new warning about airport feature often used by travelers
With the busy summer travel season underway, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is warning globetrotters about the dangers of using USB chargers at airports.
According to a Facebook post from TSA, travelers should avoid charging electronic devices via the USB ports that are now commonplace at airports around the country and the world because of the potential malware the ports may contain.
According to TSA’s advisory on Facebook: “Hackers can install malware at USB ports.” The advisory goes to state that “when you’re at an airport do not plug your phone directly into a USB port. Bring your TSA-compliant power brick or battery pack and plug in there.”
The same Facebook advisory also contains a warning from the government agency about free public WiFi available at most airports. Here too, the concern is that hackers can access your personal information unbeknownst to you, the traveler.
The TSA Facebook post states: ”Don’t use free public WiFi, especially if you’re planning to make any online purchases.”
The post goes on to warn “Do not ever enter any sensitive info while using unsecure WiFi.”
Meanwhile, privacy experts have been busy issuing warnings of their own. Travis LeBlanc, a lawyer and former member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, recently told The Mirror that travelers would be wise to opt out of the facial recognition technology that the TSA has begun using at U.S. airport security checkpoints over the past year or more.
“You don’t have to submit your picture to the government for the government to scan it and store it under their rules,” LeBlanc, The Mirror reported.
Separately, privacy and data policy expert Jennifer King told the publication: “I’m sure that the dream of enforcement agencies would be to be able to track people in real time based on something like facial recognition.” However, according to King, TSA has been “a little vague” about what they plan to do with the photo data now being collected.
TSA meanwhile, has said that any data collected is not used for surveillance. Additionally, the data is not stored.
A TSA agent previously told the HuffPost that: ”Photos are not stored or saved after a positive ID match has been made, except in a limited testing environment for evaluation of the technology’s effectiveness. A real-time picture simply means that an image is taken at the kiosk and that ‘live’ photograph is matched against the image on the identification credential.”
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