The United States has long avoided outbound passport control, but is quietly building a biometric exit system at airports that functions much like one.

Should The U.S. Add Exit Controls? Pros, Cons, And The Quiet Biometric Shift Underway

Let’s take a look at recent changes the U.S. has quietly introduced, examine the pros and cons of more formal exit controls, and then I’ll recount a couple of anecdotes from my travels over the years that give me pause.

What DHS Quietly Changed

This month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finalized rules directing U.S. Customs and Border Protection to expand its biometric exit program nationwide. What began as pilot projects at a handful of airports has now become standard policy: cameras at boarding gates capture passenger faces and match them against entry records (this will also impact land and sea borders). Airlines in many U.S. hubs have already integrated CBP’s Traveler Verification Service, meaning most international departures now involve a facial scan at boarding.

CBP insists that U.S. citizens may opt out and request manual inspection, but signage at airports can be inconsistent and the process often awkward. Images of U.S. citizens are supposed to be deleted within a 12-hour period, while non-U.S. citizens’ photos are stored for up to 75 years. TSA is also expanding its own use of face recognition at checkpoints, which raises broader questions about how far these technologies will go.

The Case For A U.S. Exit Policy

There are many valid reasons for more formal exit controls when leaving the United States:

• Better tracking of overstays. Biometric exit provides an accurate way to confirm whether foreign visitors depart when their visas expire.
• Fraud reduction. Matching faces rather than just boarding passes helps prevent imposters from leaving under false identities, even when passports are ostensibly manually checked.
• Efficiency at the gate. Automated boarding can be faster and reduce manual document handling.
• Law enforcement tool. Exit controls can flag wanted individuals before they leave the country.
• International consistency. Many countries already require exit checks and the process seems to work smoothly throughout developed nations in Europe and East Asia.

The Case Against A U.S. Exit Policy

But there are downsies to exit controls as well:

• Privacy risks. Collecting facial data at departure adds another layer of government surveillance, with potential for misuse or expansion into unrelated areas.
• Consent issues. Even if opt-outs are technically allowed, social pressure and poor signage make it difficult for citizens to decline.
• Accuracy concerns. Errors in face matching could cause travelers to miss flights or face unnecessary questioning.
• Airline partnerships. Airlines and airports often provide the cameras, raising concerns about how commercial partners might use or store the data.
• Mission creep. The U.S. has prided itself on avoiding an outbound passport desk. Biometric exit may, in practice, function as exit control without being labeled as such.

My Experience With Exit Controls

I’m ambivalent when it comes to exit controls. While I don’t have any expectation of privacy when I’m at the airport, there’s something to be said for allowing anyone who wants to LEAVE the country to leave. A couple of anecdotes come to mind.

In Israel, I was subjected to degrading secondary screening while trying to leave the country…I could have understood that when arriving, but why leaving? What did they expect to find up my butt?

In Kazakhstan, a corrupt border official demanded a bribe in order to let me out of the country. While I look back on that incident and smile, it was very stressful at the time and a layer of corruption that would not have been necessary had there been no exit controls. I’ve had issues in Qatar and Algeria as well.

But I like the way European airports are laid out. I appreciate being able to connect between two international flights without having to go through passport control and I appreciate that when arriving from a longhaul flight I come into the gate area and can use the lounge instead of facing immediate passport control.

Expanding biometric checks and adding formal passport control are two very different things and the latter would require huge changes to the way international airports are set up in the USA. Is it possible? Of course, though I think practically we won’t see that…we will just see more biometric checks.

Going back to privacy, I’m generally not in favor of expanding the reach of the surveillance state, but I do think there is merit to ensuring that wanted criminals cannot simply waltz onto an international flight with a fake passport and fly away to evade justice.

As facial recognition technology improves, I would hope that any false positives would be reduced.

> Read More:

• My Horrific Security Experience at Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport (TLV)
• Bribing My Way Out of Kazakhstan

CONCLUSION

The United States is moving closer to a nationwide exit system, whether it calls it that or not. Biometric scans offer clear benefits in terms of data accuracy, fraud prevention, and efficiency, but they also carry risks to privacy, transparency, and civil liberties. If exit controls are inevitable, they must come with strong data retention rules, independent audits, and a firewall between border security and other uses of biometric data. Without those safeguards, the U.S. risks turning a border management tool into an exit permit system, something we see in Mainland China and I do not ever want to see in the USA.

What do you think about exit control in the USA?