mergeconflict374
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[00:00:00] James: Welcome back everyone to another Merge Conflict, your weekly developer podcast, and I am fresh off of a plane. I can't even say developer, correct, because I was on so many flights yesterday all the way from Finland to Dallas for some reason. Dallas to Seattle. Seattle. I. All the way back to my place here in Oregon.

So three flights, way too long. Not too many layovers. But Frank, I'm awake. I swear you pinged me and I I may have been sleeping. I was taking a little, um, a little nap. S .NET lag in the afternoon. Yeah, a little jet lag nap. Well, I did wake up at 5:00 AM which was not a great sign. Seeing, I was very, very tired last night.

When you get to the mm-hmm. There's a, everyone's been on long flights. We've been on long flight. There's a point where you. Just kind of get dizzy and you're like, okay, I'm just like taking a shower, but like I'm dizzy. I can't even, what's going on where I was standing up? I'm, am I gonna fall? I don't know.

I should really just be in bed. Then, so I went to bed, you know, at like 11, which is really, you know, Finland time, like 10 or 9:00 AM So it's like we've been up for over 24 hours, you know, Helsinki time and, uh, went to bed and then I was up at 5:00 AM I. I was like, oh, this is not gonna be a great day. Uh, but it was good overall, but then Heather said, you should really take a nap.

And I was like, I'll take a quick hour nap three hours later. So at least we had to record this podcast and all worked out. Super happy. But Frank, it's good to be back talking to you. 

[00:01:27] Frank: I guess this is the, uh, jet Lag Podcast. Now we can just talk about our travel problems and all that kind of stuff, but No, it's great to have you back, James.

Well, America always welcomes you back and you have to go through Texas, 'cause Texas is so big. So anywhere you wanna go in the United States, of course you have to stop through. Texas, but I, I'm sorry, you're jet lagged buddy, but hey, I'm sure you can talk about tech. You can always talk about tech. I don't care how jet lagged you are.

I'm sure you can talk about tech. 

[00:01:57] James: Well, I was really the, it's not really our main topic, but side topic before we get to the main topic is I am extremely interested and fascinated how. Uh, the technology be behind Global Entry has evolved, which is, uh, how if you get back into America, it's kinda like t s A for International.

You can sign up to do Global Entry, which is another program which includes T Ss a precheck. Now, for all intents and purposes, it is. The FastPass lane to, uh, passport control when entering into America there. So in the, in the early days, in the days of your Frank, um, this could be our topic as well, by the way, because now I'm really interested in this and how this technology, well, it really has to do with ai.

So like, so when I started out mm-hmm. When you were doing global entry, you had to go in, so you had to go into an airport. Yeah. Uh, and you still have to do this or a, or a global entry. Facility and you had to get your fingerprints scanned. They scanned, they, it was like, you're, yeah, you're going to jail.

And they would, they would scan your finger. Did you ever go through this process? 

[00:03:06] Frank: I have. So I, I'm interested in hearing your version because I went through it just recently, so I, I, we can con compare and contrast technologies. But so far, so far, we're on par. Uh, yes. They still require you to, uh, scan all your fingerprints.

It's quite a tedious pro, uh, process. 

[00:03:27] James: You gotta, and you have to go talk to a human being. They ask you a bunch of questions. You fill out this survey of all of the places that you've ever traveled, like all this history. And yeah, you go into C Ttac or whatever airport, that's probably the easiest. And you go talk to an officer and they, they, they scan all your fingerprints, they take a few photos of you and bingo bango, boom.

You get your global entry, trusted travel, your trusted traveler, your card, which you don't even need the card. I dunno why you have it. Maybe when you're going to Canada or back, I don't know. 

[00:03:57] Frank: Yeah. Okay. So I had a slightly different process. Um, so way back when I. I signed up for the global entry because as you said, like it's the best way to get in.

Now have you noticed that at American airports, like all the automated machines are all just for people with the global entry now. Otherwise, you have to go like deal with a human. That didn't used to be. It used to be everyone could go use the machines like in airports around the world. Everyone can use the machines when the machines are working, obviously.

Yes. Um, but in the US it's a lot of the machines are only available for global entry. So I wanted to do it, but even many, many years ago I wanted to do it and I filled out the form online and they said, Frankie, you have to go to the airport, but you have to schedule, um, uh, an interview that's like months out.

Yeah. I scheduled the interview months out, months later, completely forgot I had the interview and so never actually did it. But recently on a trip, uh, had a few extra minutes at an airport and oddly enough, in airport in Ireland. So I got my US global entry in an airport in Ireland because God bless the Irish.

I don't know why Ireland is just great like that. 

[00:05:15] James: Yeah, no, when we were coming back from Ireland, Ireland, it's really great because it's, it's at least the only airport I know of. There's probably others, but pretty much they have a. Um, A A A T s A, that's not even t s a, it's border control, US Border Control in Ireland.

So like, that's it. When you land in America, you've already gone, you're, you're entering a small, tiny part of America in Ireland. It's weird. It's, uh, just in the airport. 

[00:05:43] Frank: It's the weirdest thing. I have never seen that. I've, I've traveled the world to everyone. I've never seen that before because the, yeah, they call it border whatever, customs border something, but it feels like an embassy.

Because they're like, there's American flags up and the floor's a little dirtier, and you're like, I must be in America. The floor's dirty. And uh, yeah. So that's how it is. And it was funny, um, because I got through the line very quickly and they're like, Hey, the global entry line over, there's kind of short.

If you just, uh, go get that global entry line, you won't ever have to do these lines. Yeah. Ever again. And I'm like, That sounds like a wonderful thing. Oh, nice. And so it was fun. Uh, I just went and stood in line. It took a little longer than I expected because although there was only one person I thought in front of me, it turned out that person was a family and had, uh, two adults and a child all that had to get their little fingerprints scanned and your picture taken.

And the little baby didn't want to cooperate, but the baby's got global entry now, so they all got it and I got it all in Ireland. 

[00:06:46] James: Nice. That's awesome. And they did your fingerprints. They did all that 

[00:06:49] Frank: stuff? Yeah, they did all that stuff. They give you a short little interview, mostly just checking up. It felt like a credit report where they're just checking your old addresses and things like that.

Yeah. They asked me a few questions like, Hmm, good question. I don't know. Um, had to think it through. It did come up kind of funny. They're like, oh, we see you applied and never followed through on that. What were you doing, Mr. Suspicious person? I'm like, not suspicious, just lazy. Just lazy, 

[00:07:16] James: just forget pulse.

It is hard. We, yeah, for, even for Heather, we had to like, we had to like go either, like, I had to go to Blaine one time to get mine and then we had to go to, uh, P D X one time to get, to get to get hers. It was, it was a, it was a pain. You gotta go in. It's like, you know, you only have to do it every. Five years or whatever, 10 years, whatever it is, which is great.

Uh, to renew the renewals, you still have to schedule an appointment, but it's even faster. It's silly that you even have to go in, but so when, when you, when we first did this, you're right, like pretty much there was only machines, uh, for global entry and you'd go talk to, you have to go stand in line, do this stuff.

So my whole thing was I was traveling so much for work and global entry was this, you know, blessing because yeah, you're just like fast passing and like doing this stuff. So you would go and there's these real just. These machines for global entry, they look like big metal boxes that are like, love them, old LCDs and all this stuff.

And you go in and you have to scan your passport. And then you have to, you put your fingers and your, they're scanning and then it's like telling you to, to make it, make your finger a little bit more straight. Yeah. And then do this and do that. And you see it all come up in real time. And, uh, and then it would print off a little form for you.

Then you'd actually go talk to a human for five seconds. You'd fill out the form, they might ask you a question, then you leave. So you're through, you're through it, you're through password control in just minutes. Now, if you're in the u, the eu, if you are an EU member and you're like, yeah, uh, I don't know, I'm in the eu.

So I just like go through like a machine that like just. Which lets me through in five seconds into my country. Yeah. We don't have that in America. We're, we're very slow. So I wanna talk first about the fingerprinting technology because, uh, frank phones don't even have fingerprint scanners anymore. I have like the latest, uh, pixel phones or whatever and, and all, and my iPhones, they're just scanning my, my eyes and doing all this stuff.

Why is finger technology and even in the airport, You know, um, is it good technology? Is it bad technology? Because, uh, I have updates to the global entry since I just reentered America in 2024. And let's just tell, let me tell you something, they're no longer checking fingerprints anymore. But let's talk about fingerprint technology.

Why was this chosen, Frank? 'cause you're a forensic expert and is it good te is it good technology? Because apple's over it, right? So apple's over it, it must, it must be garbage. It does. 

[00:09:32] Frank: Is fingerprinting good technology? Yes. As a police detective, um, I would say I don't think police detectives actually dust for fingerprints much anymore.

Like, it's actually really hard to lift fingerprints off of a crime scene, especially because any object that's existed for more than a day on this planet Earth has fingerprints all over it. So like mm-hmm. Unless, The criminal spilled some paint, fell over and then walked through an alley, putting their fingerprints on everything.

I don't think like, um, fingerprints are good from the criminal, investigative, um, world. I think they're, I think, uh, TV has overblown them there. But I never minded the fingerprint scanner on the iPhone. I thought it was a decent biometric, um, security thing. I think all the security people are now rolling their eyes at me and screaming textbooks answers about how easy they are to defeat and all that stuff.

But I don't know. I thought, I thought they were pretty good. Uh, we're talking about fingerprints, but, um, I've also done a clear at the airport and they use a different technology, so, we'll, we'll get into that too. But fingerprints, I don't know. Uh, I feel me personally, I, I, I think it's a good tech. I think it's stupid for criminal stuff.

Um, maybe the f b I can do something bad with it. I don't know, but I just don't care. They, they got my fingerprints when I was five and I guess your fingerprints really don't change as you age. So I guess, uh, the US government has had my ticket for a while, so 

[00:11:12] James: whatever. Yeah, I actually am a huge fan of fingerprinting technology.

I actually, uh, I, I think that obviously the, uh, face on lock with your iPhone is really, really good. The Android Pixel stuff has it and it's not as good, at least on the one that I have, the four, which is an older device now, where I'm like, I wish I just had the fingerprint scanner. Just sometimes I just wish I had the fingerprint scanner as an option, like on the back of the phone.

I think it would just be like a nice option 'cause I always just wanna like unlock it in a certain way. I don't always wanna have the face unlock. If it's not a hundred percent accurate, obviously they added a lot of support for masks and, and your watch and all this other stuff. I think for me, I'm not, I'm not really sure if it's like, okay, one in 50, uh, million or one in 50 billion, like those are very different odds or whatever the odds are, fingerprint versus face unlock, but at the same time, If, if you can still just get into my phone via knowing my pin right then, I don't know.

Yeah, I feel like the, the fingerprint's probably okay too, but I think it's always convenient, especially convenient by the way, when I'm cycling, to have a fingerprint unlock. It was actually one of my favorite, uh, reasons, uh, when I first had my first iPhone. Switching from Android to iPhone was so simple because I still had the, the SE still has the fingerprint unlock and that was really nice.

Yeah, and funnily enough, Heather has the iPad Mini and it has the fingerprint unlock, but it's on the. Power button. Yeah. On the iPad, which is like super, I weird and good, I guess. 

[00:12:45] Frank: Fine. I, I'd like that. I keep my iPad Pro in kind of no, uh, laptop version form, uh, uh, landscape with a keyboard attached. I'm always hitting the unlock button, which is on the left in that mode, and my hand is always covering the face ID camera.

So Apple puts up the little graphic you're covering the face ID camera. If the, if the power button was a fingerprint thing, I wouldn't have that issue. So I, yeah, you're convincing me. This is the greatest technology ever. In fact, I was talking to an let's go with eight year old kid today, and we were complaining about passwords together.

And it was funny because he brought up, um, I wish this had the fingerprint scanning thing. So even the kids, even the kids like fingerprint scanning. So 

[00:13:33] James: hopefully it seems cool. It's like futuristic, right? Like even on my, on my MacBook, uh, air, it has the fingerprint on lock and like, it feels futuristic.

And obviously we had fingerprints. I remember like the first time I saw a Windows laptop with like a little, you know, the little fingerprint scanner. Like, whoa, this is mind-boggling. Like, wow, this is like so cool. Yeah. And then I. Yeah, you're kind of slowing them. Away, but then also still emerge on new different devices, which is fascinating too, like on the laptop, right?

So, 

[00:14:00] Frank: yeah, I, I, I like it on the laptop for sure, for like when the screen gets locked or something like that for logging in a hundred percent of it. Um, where I think it goes wrong. This is such a nitpick, I don't know. Sorry, side tangent. On a side tangent. Um, the autofill, the password autofill in safari. So, you know, um, we go to a website and it suggests a password.

If you're on a non-touch computer, you can just like hit enter and it fills in the password or you click the thing. But if you're on a touch computer, you have to go and touch the little fingerprint sensor. Fine. Mm-hmm. It's fine. But the other trick is you cannot move the mouse away from the little menu that pops up.

If you move the mouse away from it. The little fingerprint scanner doesn't do a darned thing. And so I find that it's, is it more security? I don't know if it's more security, because on a computer without it, It's definitely easier on a computer without it to enter passwords. I don't feel like it's actually providing security or not, but um, whatever.

It, it's still kind of fun to touch the computer in order to buy 

[00:15:11] James: things. Yeah, no, I agree. I, I have, I was just on my, me, it's the same, like I was logging to every site and I was like, oh, especially if you're doing, like, I'll do like financial planning. It's like log into like all the, yeah. And log and log and log in.

You're like, okay, I get it. Like, but like maybe like keep my, keep my key store unlocked for like, I don't know, 30 seconds. I dunno if I'm like in the same session, same tab. I don't know. Uh, so anyways, this technology, Frank is no longer used. Mm-hmm. Um, At global entry fingerprints are gone. Sad. Have you realized this, that they're gone?

[00:15:42] Frank: No, I haven't because I honestly, I went to easy to travel to countries on the last time I left the country, so I didn't have a need to use my global entry the last time. So I'm still, I'm still waiting to use it and now I'm all sad because I don't think I know where my card is. So how am I supposed to Global entry now, James?

[00:16:04] James: Well, there was an intermediate step into where we are at today, and the intermediate step was that I think that the, the global entry technology officers are like, Hey, we gotta be at least, at least a little bit better than, than, you know, the iPhone. Like, we gotta try to be better than the iPhone. So they're like, we're gonna get rid of the fingerprint scanners, but we're still gonna have you scan your passport.

Right? Yeah. So we're gonna have you scan your passport and then we're going to, Also take a photo of you and a human will verify that you are the person that that's where they're at, basically. At this point. Or, or they were at, this was in, this is 20 20, 20 22 talk, I think even 2021. 2022 talk. So you'd go up to the kiosk and you'd fill out questions.

Right. So this is the other thing too, is uh, the other technology was progressing and what I noticed and Heather noticed is that you'd get into ctac, uh, internationally. The global entry line. Would actually sometimes be longer than the non-global entry line. And this is a big problem. You do not want that, right?

Because then what's the advantage of global entry? It's like the c s a pre line where it's like, okay, like I guess I'm gonna wait an extra five minutes now because in the pre-check line, because I wanna keep my shoes on, you know what I mean? And I don't want to body scan every five seconds, but this was the technology.

They got rid of the scanners. But you still would scan your passport and then you say, oh, I'm on this flight. I didn't do these things. This was short-lived technology because I, I don't even know what they were doing. Where you would, they would just take a photo. That sounds terrible. It's one of those things where.

They would take a photo of you, but it's like you're at Costco, so it's all in black and white and it's all pixely matric key. But then they would also take a photo of you, but they didn't tell you that 3, 2, 1 photo. They would just take a photo of you. So all my photos were like me looking down or like, eh, like what's going on?

I got, oh, I just got off a 15 hour flight. I look great. They would do this stuff. Yeah. And then you would go and you'd go talk to a person. They're like, James. James, yep. Cool. Where did you come from? Oh, I came from Helsinki. Boom. Go like this. Right. Not anymore. Frank 20 goodness 23 Global Entry Technology.

We walked and they're all brand new high tech. They're like glowing. Whoa. It's like a. Right. It's like someone had budget for lighting effects, right? They're like, oh. What they also saw is like, we gotta up our game. We gotta be, try to be better than the iPhone. Mm-hmm. And we also need to incorporate some of this cool lighting technology that video game streamers have.

So we need it to be glowing and pulsating hexagons. Right hexagons, it's like everything's hexagon and it's like triangles. It's like a part, it's like a A E D M concert. Oh fuck. Like at the now finding the global entry area, they've moved it again because why not move it? But, so there are these little, little, these little like blue kiosks that are like popping out of the ground, but they're shorter.

Not like big tall things like, and you walk up to and it's all like, it's like, Look here 

[00:19:00] Frank: while I play some dubstep. Look here. While I play dubstep. Dubstep. 

[00:19:04] James: And it's a, it's like, look here and it's like proceed. Like that's it. Oh, see now you walk, you walk up, finally proceed. Hashtag final boom. And then you do get in another line.

You get into another line and it's in a short little line where there's one, one global entry officer, custom border, uh, thing. Wait, wait. And they call your 

name 

[00:19:24] Frank: out. Oh, darn. Okay. Yep. 

[00:19:28] James: So, so, so when you go up hoping up to the global entry line, I'm just hoping, James, 

[00:19:32] Frank: that this is all just to get a high five.

Are they just gonna high five? You do. They call it your name? James. You did it. James. Welcome back to America High five. 

[00:19:41] James: So you walk up to the line and Yeah, they just call out people's names and they say, James, James clear, Heather, clear whatever. Boom. Go, go, go. Right, and then just go through it. Now here's the thing, Frank.

No, but I have also done the clear sign up. Uh, at one point I've had them delete all of my data. This is pre-security breach. I had them delete all my data. I said delete all of it. Now, I did the free trial. I don't need you're clear. Scan this. I, I never gave the, I never gave the US government. I. Any other, they took a, they took one photo of me, Frank, when I did the photos and the renewal on a Logitech C nine 20 camera.

Right. Okay. Way back in the day. Right. Uh, 10 80 p resolution. Yeah. That, that's what they take the photos on. And they have, so I, I understand like when they, in the previous version would take a photo of me, they would bring up the photo. Okay. Someone's checking, like, it is, like when they, they look at your, you know, photo ID when you're going through the security, but now Frank, I don't know what they're doing.

I don't know if it's a global scan, facial scan, whatever. I have much longer hair now, which is in no photos. Yeah. In this technology. And that's where we're at today. Like you look at the camera and it's not like show, it's not like, it's not like they show a feed and it's like, you know what they wanted to do.

What I wanted them to do is like, Which would've been cool is like hit the kiosk and it's like, look at the camera and it's all like your face comes up and it's like analyzing and it's like, you know, they didn't do any of that. That would've been really cool. Hollywood. All Hollywood. No, there's, and it's just like, is an old school, like, you know, two D graphic that's like processing and it's like a person thinking and it's like, hmm.

It's like proceed and that's it. So that's where we're at. I have no idea what technology is. What technology do you think that is? Oh, 

[00:21:20] Frank: I can guess. I don't know, but I, I would love to guess Guessings fun. Um, I, I do have to say probably everyone in at least New Zealand and Australia are rolling their eyes 'cause they had cool face, uh, taking picture technology also when I rolled through.

So it's nice that America's catching up with the world. Uh, gosh, what are they doing? Um, I mean, a, they could just be passing you through. You could have just won the lottery. You, you get a free pass. Welcome to America, James. Um, yeah, probably the system isn't doing that though. It, it's tricky. Um, they could be doing, if, if it's a neural network, it's a problem of they have one or two or three pictures of you.

In a database somewhere. Um, those have been, oddly enough, we call it fingerprinting. Great segue into all this kind of stuff, but you run a neural network on that image, and you can, it's not compression because you can't restore the image from it, but it brings it down into like a little hash code, hashes the image.

Mm-hmm. It's often called a fingerprint. It's called a light in space in all the neural network kind of talk. And what's neat is they can take a picture of you and if these neural networks are trained well, they can, um, if you look like the same person, they'll give you a thumbs up match. If you look like a different person, they'll give you a thumbs down match, uh, regardless of beards.

Like there are databases out there of the same person over time. With different photography modes, with different hairstyles and all that kind of stuff. So if they did a good job, they would train on a giant database like that. Being the government, I have no idea. They, they probably subcontracted it out to a company and hopefully they did a good job doing all this kind of stuff.

Uh, I do hear that the programmer should add more mazzy features to the scanning part, but, um, I don't know if it's actually doing what you're saying it's doing, if it's, uh, Looking up your passport, ID grabbing some photography from you that's been fingerprinted from some server, taking a picture of you running that same fingerprint on the recent picture of you comparing them, giving a thumbs up or thumbs down based on a threshold.

That's probably what they're doing. Um, if not, I'd be a little bit impressed actually, because that's how I would solve it. And of course, my solution's the right way to do it. But, uh, either way it's good. I'm happy to see America catching up with the world and it's freaky because that means Walmart is gonna be doing the same thing and all of us stores will be doing the same 

[00:23:58] James: thing.

Yeah. Who was it? I was at, because this is kind of like an airport technology episode. Yeah. I guess. But I was at, um, you know, the Hudson Hudson News. Yeah, of course. Like, you know, the, everyone knows 

[00:24:11] Frank: and loves Hudson News. 

[00:24:13] James: That's the news. That's where if you're not American, that's where you buy your, your crisps and your chips and your soft drinks.

Uh, that not all water, m ms, that are eight $18. They have a with palm. You, you, you register your palm Great. With a credit card. Great. So that you're, they they do a scan of your, of your palm. Yeah. And you can wave to pay with your Palm Pay wife. You know, in, in all of Europe, they just tap, they just tap their card.

Everyone just taps. Like, we haven't even, we haven't, for some reason in America, we haven't even nailed. Tap to pay, like we're close, man. It's not universally supported. It's not universal, but 

[00:24:50] Frank: I feel like we're, we're above the 80% life. I feel like we're, we're at the point where I try now, you know where I almost expect we're at.

We're 

[00:25:00] James: we're at. I would say yes and no. Even my local grocery store, it can barely take a chip. Okay. I would say this, I haven't swiped a credit card. I haven't swiped a credit card in a long time. I have still input a chip. Right. Yeah. But like gas stations, grocery stores. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, all the way behind.

I, I, now, when I go to my bank, I don't put it in my card. I tap my card. On, on the little reader, but that's even newer and that's not even in all of the ATMs. 'cause you know what, are they gonna update all of their dold machines? Like no, they're not gonna do that. But when you went, was in Europe, you know, and, um, all of our European listeners Yeah, which I think are probably the majority of our listeners are just again, rolling their eyes.

'cause a lot of places are only card, right? There is no cash, there is no anything else. It's only tap to pay. Right. Then. That's it. Um. Um, and, and that's it. We can't even nail that, but yet we're like, let's pay with our palm for some reason. You know, Hudson News. Yeah. But I think that was mind boggling. I think what's interesting about the global security check is that yeah, you're right.

Like I, I. When I went through it, when we went through it and it was really fast 'cause it did process, it sat there and it processed for like 20 seconds, 15 seconds. And I was like, well, I wonder what is it doing a like, is it doing an n c i s like lookup where it's like, it's, do I imagine my, the, the, the photo of my face is like going through the database of every single American and it's like, you know, that's not what's happening.

I dunno. No. Oh, okay. Well, what, okay, so, so it's taking a photo of my face, it's hashing it, and then it's going through an algorithm and it's like looking for a likeness check. Highest percentage. Oh, James is the highest percentage go. Is, is that what you think is happening? 

[00:26:37] Frank: Yeah. Um, I, I, I don't like using hash though, because I.

Programmers listen to us. So, um, it's not a hash because a rash should be random data. So it's really just, um, um, an embedding. I believe people are starting to call 'em now also. So let's call it an embedding. Um, it's just, um, you're reducing the photo down to a list of numbers, but it's a good list of numbers because if you just compare the lists of numbers, if the numbers are similar, the images are probably similar, the faces are probably similar.

So hopefully it's, it's zeroing in on face stuff too. It's not just an image processing one, but it's based on face data. So ideally what they're doing is you enter your passport, um, number, they download these embeddings of you embedded James. They download Embedded James. They take a modern recent photograph of you.

They run the embedding algorithm on that and they compare the embeddings. If they matched, great, if not, You're out. So that's how I think they would work because no, you cannot, uh, search a database, uh, that will, that will not work. What what you can do is make a web request to a server, gimme the James embedding, run the embedding on your own local stuff and just compare the 

[00:27:53] James: two.

Well, and, and I, my assumption is they know every single person that is coming in that day. Right. No, that's it. It doesn't work. The database size. No, no, I could never, 

[00:28:05] Frank: um, no. It, it's most likely keyed off of passport. Identity most likely. Um, who knows? Like, uh, passport systems are old and archaic. Um, I remember even when like the United States was like, everything felt like it was still on paper and we were using crayons for everything.

I remember going through Israel where they had computers and digital photography and all that kind of stuff. Uh, 'cause they took. Security, seriously. And we didn't, we used crayons and paper, but it, it was quite a shock to see, um, just how organized the system could be, even many, many, many, many, many years ago.

And so how that system works today, I imagine they just have wonderful photography on all of us. Stored in some server. Mm-hmm. Probably hosted by Google somewhere. 

[00:28:56] James: Probably. Yeah. Well Microsoft, they have to know Microsoft. They have to know some server somewhere. Yeah, some A w s, Google Azure Cloud, uh, out there.

And I am looking at, this is an article, this is new. So the article at least came out about a year ago. Mm-hmm. And, and, and started at D F W and i h, which is in Houston. So Texas one's there and they say, all they say are facial biometric kiosks. That's all they say. Next generation. That's it. And they're pleased to announce this.

And, and that just says streamline. They don't tell you about anything about how it says. It says the new paperless, which by the way, it's paperless, so no paper and go global entries save in trees. Um, it says, utilizes facial comparison. A mobile officer technology by confirming identity and making an admission decision without producing a receipt.

Mm-hmm. This process will continue to increase contactless pro processing and reduce environmental footprint. So you go in green global entry now, so it's not, so they say biometric, it's facial, facial comparison recognition. So this isn't, New, new technology, but, but you're saying is probably the algorithms and the models that they're sending this through are making it so it's a lot faster and more efficient than ever.

Yeah. I'd assume, 

[00:30:11] Frank: I mean that, that, that would be the right way to do it. It's really quite possible if they're just giving you a thumbs up every time. Then they're just leaving it up to the officer to give you a thumbs down. Uh, it really could just be like, 

[00:30:23] James: oh, this is, this is 80% James. It could be 

[00:30:25] Frank: taking a picture of you and uploading it to a server so that they have a record of you coming through there.

So if you do something naughty in the u s a, they can be like, not you, you're not allowed through the border anymore. It could be that simple. They could just be giving you a thumbs up. But if it is security, it should be doing something vaguely, like I said, making sure that your face actually matches your, uh, known face.

[00:30:47] James: Something like that. Yeah. And if you, and you know, once we got through, I was like, well, that was like really strange because like, yeah. I haven't given the US government that many photos of my face. Mm-hmm. Like before, like even when I did the global entry, like they took like a photo and then I thought about it and I'm like, Actually, I've probably given the US government a lot of photos on my face.

If you think about it, all my, all my driver's license, all my passports and passport renewals. Uh, every time I've gone through, uh, customs before, like, and even border, they take a photo of you or they have a thing on a webcam, right? So all of those times, and then obviously even doing the global entry. So in that regard, as a 37 year old person, I have to imagine.

That they probably at least have 40, 50, 60 photos of just me over time. Yeah. That I've given them by just going through their lines. And then I have to imagine is enough data, like how many photos do you think they need? Is it one photo, two photos to give a Oh, 

[00:31:48] Frank: literally one. Literally one. Well, okay. First, honestly, multiple makes it harder.

Um, oh yeah, but because, because you're doing a matching, right? So what if they have three photos of you that are very different, you know, one's bearded and you're sad, one's clean shaven, and you're happy, you know, it's, you're just tripping up the network. Now it's easier to just compare against one. Uh, yeah, I, and I do wonder because, um, yeah, so I was using Clear because I hate lines, so I, I paid for a little bit of clear, and they do just the face scan thing too.

I have no idea what they're doing. They say it's retina. I. I don't know if they're actually doing the retina or not, but it would be actually the same process of no one can, like in the eighties, they would like align the retina and they would do the graphics like you want. The green lasers would shoot out and it would like scan your retina.

But in the modern days you would do it the same way I was saying you would do it with a face. You create an embedding of the retina that is representative of the retina. They have the other retina scan of you in embedding. They completely embeddings. That would be the, again, the easiest way to do it. It is funny though, um, you, you're talking about like searching a big database of every face of every American who's ever gone through every airport.

Um, if you do have these little neural network embeddings, you can do, uh, what's usually called, uh, K N N K, nearest neighbors. Um, find, find me the 10 most. Similar faced people to James Possible, and this is why I should not be allowed to work at any of these security companies because how could you not run that query?

I, I would love to see of all the faces in the world, which one looks most similar to me and that kind of stuff, I would abuse my position. Therefore, don't gimme a job at the t ss a, but uh, it would still be a total trip and totally fun to do that kind of stuff. Bad for security. I'm sure it's not possible, but won't that be fun?

[00:33:55] James: Well, I am fascinated if, if, uh, what the global entry officer sees too on their end, right? Like, do they see just, oh, here it, it's 98% James, like, please validate. Are they saying like, oh, it could be James Frank or, or Gary. We don't, you know, you decide and then you pick an option. You pick an option. Is it Gary?

I don't know. Yeah, but again, they know who's traveling on what day, so they should have a. Fairly good. Yeah. Pool set to go from. Yeah. I was always curious about the clear, because they do, they, they, they do your retinal scan, facial scan type of stuff and you know, similar, I'm assuming it's the same with the palm is like if, if you have something that is unique, right?

Whether it's a fingerprint, whether it's your palm, whether it's your retinals, whether it's your entire face, right? Because like there, but I think what. My whole thing is like with the apple face unlock, it's, it's like depth sensors, right? Like, it's like depth map of your face or raw. It doesn't seem like any of the technology that any of these companies are using No.

Are advanced or is what's in this phone, right? Am I wrong? 

[00:35:00] Frank: No. No, you're not. You're absolutely right. But that's the job of that human physical officer there, because I'm imagining you totally could spoof it unless they do have three D cameras on 'em. I really doubt it. I mean, everyone that I saw had a Logitech camera on it.

Um, you could, yeah, take a picture of. George Bush and look and put George Bush in front of the camera and it would register that as George Bush because of course it's an image of George Bush. It would do a perfect match. Yeah. So Apple put in, um, three D stuff to make sure that there's at least a three D object in front of the camera that's matching the image that the camera is receiving.

So if you wanna fake out face id, you actually have to go through the effort of building a sculptured face to fake it out. Um, If you came up to a security line and put a fake face picture over the camera, pretty sure the security guard's gonna tackle you. So, uh, you won't have to deal with any other problems that day.

You'll be, you'll be forced to deal with that problem. 

[00:36:04] James: Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so this gives me a better analysis. 'cause I was always wondering like how each of those works, but I think the interesting part is that actually the technology that, and what they were doing with the fingerprint, You know, fingerprinting is just the same.

That's doing it with your face. It's a different data set. Yeah. So instead of running your fingerprints, which is what they're taking photos of before analyzing it, giving it a validation check. Now they're doing it with your face and streamlining that process pretty much. So there's one validation. Yeah.

Um, and yeah, it would be pretty annoying if, if Apple needed to approve every face unlock in real time, and the human needed to verify it to me. So that makes sense. Why there's the three D map on there where yeah, there's a physical person there that's doing the validation. Now here's one thing that's.

Really, really, really also interesting is that in America, when you go into the airport, right, that's like us, me getting out of the airport, when you go into the airport, You would give the, the, the, you would scan your ticket so that would pull up the different information. You give them your driver's license, boom, boom, boom.

Now, at many airports, you don't even need to give them the, you don't need to scan your, your ticket. They're just like, give us, give us the id. Mm-hmm. Right. So here's the id. They know that you're flying that day. Does that stuff a little bit faster? Yeah. Now in Europe, in Europe, Frank, there's not even a person.

There's not even you. Here's a here, and this is. And maybe this is newer in Europe, I don't know. But I was going through Scandinavia, through through Norway and through um, um, Finland. We were taking a lot of flights. We took like, you know, 10 flights in like 10 days. We were just all these little hoppers to, to get around the different areas.

But every airport was the same. There's a big go through security, right? And in America we're like, oh, we gotta go through security, get there five hours ahead of time. In Europe? No, it's just, you just go, unless you're in Heathrow. Heathrow's probably always terrible, but any airport Heathrow's, nasty, Helsinki and Oslo, they're fine.

But here's the thing is, Frank, you just go and you just scan your boarding pass and, and you just, you go, you just walk through and then you go through security, boom, boom, boom. When you get to your gate. You, you're gonna board the plane. Guess what you do? You just scan you, you scan your passport. You not even, sorry.

Mm-hmm. You don't scan your passport. You scan your ticket with your QR code and the gates open. Right? We don't even have gates. We don't have little things. No. Like you want a speed line and just let me scan. It's like this. But here's the thing, Frank, how do they know it's me? Like how do, how do I, I could just take a photo of.

This is what puzzles me and maybe I don't understand airport technology in it, but then like I I, and maybe it's someone that works for some European Union airport. Let me know how this works. But you know, I get my QR code on my phone and I, I go on, that's me, right? But couldn't I just take a screenshot of that and then just give it to you and then couldn't you just walk through and get on the plane, Frank, so they care who's on the plane, but they do right?

Like. Then when I get onto the plane, I don't even talk to a person. I just put the thing on this, let me on the plane. Yeah. I've always, always wondered, am I then, now they're gonna boot me out of, of all these, these blinds I'm talking about. I've always wondered, Frank, also, once you're through security, let's say you and I are traveling together, but let's say you are, let's say, let's say you are, let's say you are going.

To San Diego. Mm-hmm. And I'm going to Denver. Okay. But the flights are around the same time. Okay. So we're both through, we're both through security. Yeah. Couldn't we just give each other our own ticket and couldn't we just swap places inside the airport? I mean, I know we scan it again, but where is there, is there something else happening in, in the airports that I don't know about?

Like some other facial recognition? Like is, am I just being scanned in real time all the time. At the airport and they're always validating where I'm at and tracking me all the time. I'm just 

[00:39:52] Frank: saying, Frank, you're just saying, just hypothetical here. Hypothetical. James, you're, you're describing what I, I fondly call the 1970s and the 1980s, what I, I call pre nine 11.

How airports used to be. Of course. No. Okay. So a, I bet you the airports wish they were tracking you in that way, but no, they're not. They, that's, could you imagine running the servers to track people like that? Ugh. No one's got time for that. Yeah. Yeah. You a hundred percent could swap it. Don't do it. It's illegal or against your terms of service or something like that.

Hmm. I'm not your attorney. But don't do it. It's a little worse than theater hopping, I guess, than the theaters. Um, no, I, they've got tons of security, but I'd be like, I bet you a casino has way better. Human tracking security than an airport. You know, I bet you they know exactly what you're doing, every movement you've made, but I think the airports are, they can barely keep the lights on in some circumstances.

Um, yeah, I think you're pretty safe at, at least for now, but man, it, it does make you a pine for the 1970s and the eighties where you really could just do all that now. That's very good for Northern Europe. I'm sure North America will get that technology in 20 or 30 years when we catch up with the rest of the world.

Uh, it, it sounds wonderful. I, I remembered I went through something similar to like that. Uh, the only downside I would say is after doing a little bit of scanning, people stare at you. They give you the look and they just look at you. So instead of talking to people, they just look at you. I'd almost rather just talk to the person, perhaps.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, but other than that, uh, I think it's all. I think it's, it's definitely improved, um, from maybe even just five years ago. I think security was at, its most terrible at airports, but some of the lines have smoothed out. Um, especially with, like you said, the boarding passes now can get you through half of half of all the nonsense.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, 

[00:41:54] James: and I even, I even. I even think the, the security lines have gotten a lot better, but it's actually really interesting. When we were in Finland and Heather made this great point. Is they had, they had these cra, they looked like these huge crazy portal pods that they were sending your bags through for like the scanners, like mm-hmm.

All this stuff. And I was like, well, that's crazy like this, you know? You know, obviously Finland's a big country, but it's not like the size of America, right? Where we just have this huge, crazy, like all this stuff and they're like, oh, we're going through this. I'm like, wow, this is cool. Their technology's so cool.

And then Heather's like, yeah, but like, think about it, like how many airports. Does Finland have that they need to outfit with? Yeah, with these scanners compared to America and how many. How many different, how many international airports 

[00:42:38] Frank: do we have? 

[00:42:40] James: Exactly right. And how many non-internet and just domestic ones that we have.

Like they have to go and they have to upgrade these slowly. So like yeah, there's obviously like even this global entry thing is at like two or how many now? Maybe airports there are, I don't even know. It's at Ctech, like, It's a slow rollout. Just like our tap to pay. Yeah. Like we can't even get tapped to pay in, in every, every place.

But it's interesting to, to look at other countries to see them. Yeah. You know, just different mechanisms. Right. Uh, general, we're still taking 

[00:43:04] Frank: off our shoes. Sorry. I was just thinking. Um, but before we go, 'cause we should wrap up our super technology podcast here on airports. I think you're jet lagged and we're just gonna keep talking about airports all night.

Um, but I did have a running theory going through my head, going through a few, uh, recent modern airports and I would love, uh, anyone to give feedback if you actually do know anything about airport security. It felt like a lot of those, um, picture taking things were like a double check service. So like you would entered the security process, it would take a picture of you.

And then mo further along in the security process, it would take another picture of you and I was wondering if it's a double picture for different reasons, customs versus immigration, who knows things like that. Or was it actually just validating that you are still the same person you're claiming to be, that you haven't done a document swap or something like that?

Uh, I would love any feedback from anyone that knows that because that was a running theory I was developing based solely on nothing other than, gosh, people are taking my picture a lot. I wonder what they're doing with all my pictures. 

[00:44:09] James: Yeah, when we got on our flight to Finland for the first time, it was only one of the flights.

Um, but it had the, you can participate in optional facial border check-in or whatever, right? Mm-hmm. So we didn't even have to scan or didn't have to scan our thing. We just like looked at the camera and it's like, cool, James, uh, 36 F, or whatever. Right. Uh, so it knew that which was, which was pretty cool, but there was still a person there to revalidate a hundred percent that it's really you or whatever.

But I thought that was nifty, um, to, to speed up any, getting through any lines. Yeah. Am I Okay. I think I'm okay with them doing that because I'm already in a bubble, right? Yeah. I think like the airport, I'm already in an airport bubble where they, to actually get into here, you need to verify your identity.

Right? So since I'm inside of this, I'm okay with this bubble. The question is, I. Do we get to like fifth element where I'm like, you know, here's how I'm like, you know, paying for, you know, paying and doing this stuff. Are they gonna like, well World Coin is a good example, you know, but are you caught up on world coin?

Uh, no stuff. Oh boy. So World Coin is a crypto, uh, currency from Sam Altman that, um, Chat, G p t open AI fame, um, but world coin it rolled out and your key is your as a retinal scan, basically. Ah, so you, so that's your, I it's a global identity processing system. So they were rolling out the world coin, like registration.

It's a big controversial, they did a lot in like emerging markets to try to get, like, you know, that's where they wanted to tackle. They're like, well, we want to. Mm-hmm. Want this to be payable and like, make crypto easier. So if you could do like fifth element, like, you know, scans or whatever, you know, that'd be easier.

But they were just giving away like, you know, $50. Oh, geez. Yeah. But they were just signing up, you know, a lot of pe you know, a lot of people to, to, to in, in, in coin or whatever. So world coin, I, I don't know. Like, I don't know. What do you, what, so to wrap this up for, Where do you, where, where do we see this going and what technology are you comfortable with?

Not only for airport technology, but for global, like payment technology, going through stuff like, are, are we still at a tap to pay? Are we at a, you know, blink once for your visa, blink twice for your MasterCard? Oh, 

[00:46:27] Frank: Amazon would love that. Huh? I mean already if I say the wrong words, I've bought something and it arrives at the house.

So you have this classic capitalism we wanna sell to you constantly. I. Then, um, we're a heavily militarized society and we're scared for our own lives. So we've, we heavily favor security and safety and comfort. And so you got these battling things, capitalism and safety and comfort, and they're all vying for our time.

And I think biometrics are here to stay because biometrics are. I think good. Um, but maybe they should be multi biometric. It should be face and retina and fingerprint. You know, I want the trifecta of security here, and so I, I personally don't have a problem with it, but security measures are always a generational thing.

You know what? Everyone's comfortable with shifts throughout time. You know, um, you're talking about people being paid to open a cryptocurrency account. People used to get paid to vote one way or another in US elections. Like literally people would go out and just hand you money and be like, vote for me, here's 50 bucks.

So we've always had, we've always shifted our, what's acceptable and what's not. And I think, uh, if someone's offering you 50 bucks to open an account, you should take it. And I think the biometric stuff is, Gonna constantly shift and there will always be the security people who say it's, it's not good enough.

But, um, it's a working technology. You know, if, if the government's kind of trusting it, it's on all our laptops. It's a technology that's here to say stay. It was a fun, fascinating, cool thing in the eighties. Then it became a little bit scary in the nineties and the naughties, but I think it's just, it's just one of those technologies like Bluetooth, you know, love it or hate it.

It's just kind of here now and it's, we're 

[00:48:31] James: with it. Yeah. I will say this, to wrap it up too, is we set a really cool hotel in Oslo, but it's pretty modern and is like newer. Newer and tech modern, and you have to, you have to. Do everything through a mobile app, um, to the check-in process, scanning your, your passport, and then even unlocking your door.

Yeah. Uh, is all through your mobile phone. This app called the guest app. And I would say that I was kind of okay with it, but I couldn't imagine like my parents doing it because to unlock the doors, you can't just use, like, they didn't use N F C. Oh, they didn't, uh, they, they used Bluetooth. Oh golly. And every time, like from doing the elevators, like to go up the elevator, you gotta take out your phone.

You gotta say unlocked door. To go to the laundry room. You gotta do this every time you go in. And like the boot up process. Yeah. Had my first, I tried it on my Android phone and I was like, this is like unusable. It's just like too slow to boot up the, the Bluetooth process, whatever they were doing. Yeah, I know it's not, I know it doesn't take that long.

I know because like I've done this stuff, but like what happens is like the door needs to also save energy, so it needs to like kind of like turn on and then it needs to do a thing and then it's like, okay, I just wanted, like, there's some things like I'm an old cranky man. There's something like, it's better just tap to pay.

Right. And here's the cool thing. We were renting a car in Bergen and we drove out to Flamm and I needed to return the car. And this was really great, is that there was a little, uh, a little, uh, a bunch of tiny little boxes we need to do after hour car drop. And how I'm used to it is like you just like put it in a magical box and like, hope someone finds it now.

This one was cool. It's like, oh, enter, enter. Your last name and then enter like the code that's on the, the key. And then a little door opens. Like, you know when you go to like Home Depot or you go to Walmart, there's like a, or the, the Amazon pickup, you know the door pops open. Yeah. Gimme that technology.

That's really cool. Like, how come I can't just go to the hotel? It says a facial recognition scan and like enter like a confirmation code and it's like here's your key. Pop it out. Right. I had to, you know, you have to keep going. So sometimes technology to a downfall is bad. So I asked the the, they don't even have a person at the door.

It's just, I'd ask the bartender, 'cause that's who this I'm like, how many times is I'm like, how many times do people get confused about the app? And he is like, All the time. Yeah, it is. It is like all the time. Yeah. I'm like, so goods good and good and bad, right? Yeah. But I'm like imagining, I was like, Ugh.

But if, if it makes my life faster and easier. 'cause it seems like a like, oh, I wanna use, even when I do the Marriott, you can, you can register your phone to do, I don't even do it. I, I don't need to do that. I'm stopping you James. James, let me end easily. 

[00:51:05] Frank: We, we will do the hotel technology episode next time we're covering airport technology today.

Let's cut her off. I think everyone's enjoyed delirious James for long enough. 

[00:51:19] James: Well, thanks everyone for, for, uh, allowing me to, uh, talk about airport technology. Because it's fun. As technology progresses on our phones and our lives everywhere we're at, if you want us to talk about a specific piece of technology that you're fascinated in right into the show, go to MER Conflict fm or check out our new YouTube channel at youtube.com/at Emerge conflict fm.

We'll put that in the show notes for y'all, or just go to mem. There's links to all of our places you can find us. If you like us, leave us a review on the internet. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment anywhere that you can leave a comment. But it's gonna do it for this week's Emerge Conflict elongated airport edition, just like hopefully the elongated sleep I'm gonna get tonight.

Um, but so next week now I changed on 

[00:52:01] Frank: to Magno, and I'm Frank Krueger. Thanks for watching and 

[00:52:04] James: listening. Peace.