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States Are Turning the Internet Into a Biometric Surveillance System
You probably didn’t notice when filing taxes online became a facial recognition checkpoint. One moment you’re logging into the IRS website, the next you’re holding your driver’s license up to your phone camera while an AI scans your face. Welcome to the new internet tax — paid not in dollars, but in biometric data.
What started as Louisiana’s 2022 law requiring government ID verification for adult websites has metastasized into a nationwide digital identity dragnet. By 2025, states from Texas to Arkansas demand face scans or document uploads for everything from social media accounts to tax services. The Supreme Court’s recent Texas ruling essentially greenlit this biometric bonanza, treating your facial geometry as the cost of online participation.
The IRS exemplifies this creeping surveillance. Over 70% of taxpayers now verify through ID.me’s facial recognition system, despite Senator Ron Wyden’s protests that it’s “simply unacceptable to force Americans to submit to scans using facial recognition technology as a condition of interacting with the government online.” The agency has spent $242 million on these contracts while failing to track performance metrics — a bureaucratic blank check for your biometric blueprint.
5 Worrisome Privacy Clauses Hidden in Smart Home Devices
Many of the apps and devices we use every day contain privacy terms most people never read. Yet those clauses often allow extensive data harvesting, behavioral tracking and long-term storage of personal information. Some even allow companies to access recordings or share data with partners.
The reality is simple. Smart devices inside your home and car can build detailed profiles about your daily life. Your schedule. Your habits. Even your conversations. One way I explain this to people is simple. Your phone knows where you go. Your smart home knows what you do when you get there.
I unpack how this works in everyday life on my Beyond Connected podcast at getbeyondconnected.com. In many cases, these devices are not just reacting to you. They are actively logging, analyzing, and storing your behavior by default, often without you realizing it. Let’s walk through five privacy clauses that surprise most people. We will start with number five and count down to the most unsettling one.
Yes, You Can Opt Out of TSA Facial Recognition — Here’s Why Experts Say You Should
Travel right now can feel stressful enough without adding new layers of uncertainty. Among them is the ongoing debate around facial recognition at airports, a technology privacy experts have long raised concerns about. That’s why it’s important for travelers to understand their rights — including when they can opt out of facial scans.
If you’ve traveled through any major U.S. airport over the last few years, you’ve likely noticed the addition of facial recognition cameras at TSA checkpoints. According to the agency, it introduced facial recognition technology into the screening process at select airports as a “security enhancement” and to improve “traveler convenience.” According to the TSA, these scanners are already stationed in more than 84 airports nationwide and will “expand to more than 400 federalized airports over the coming years.”
But the key word in all of this is “voluntarily.” You do not have to scan your face at all if you do not want to. It’s right there on the TSA’s website, which states, “Travelers who do not wish to participate in the facial recognition technology process may decline the optional photo, without recourse, in favor of an alternative identity verification process, which does not use facial recognition technology to verify their identity.” It also noted that using an alternative method does not take longer and “travelers will not lose their place in line for security screening.”
There are also signs posted around the airport attesting to this “voluntary” rule, but they are often hidden in plain sight and easy to miss. And while it may not seem like a huge deal, many privacy experts and government officials say it’s a better idea to opt out and simply get verified by a desk agent instead.
‘That Wasn’t Me’: How Facial Recognition Led to a Woman Being Jailed for 6 Months
The Washington Times reported:
To investigators, the case against Kimberlee Williams appeared straightforward.
“It’s very obvious it’s you,” an officer in Montgomery County, Maryland, said to Williams, who was handcuffed to a table in the police department. Williams had several prior convictions for writing bad checks in Oklahoma, and the person who appeared in surveillance photos, accused of making fraudulent withdrawals in Maryland, looked like a match in surveillance photos — the same build, the same age, the same shape face.
But Williams was adamant. That wasn’t her. She lived in Oklahoma and had never been to Maryland, she said, until police arrested her and flew her in to be questioned.
She would not learn for years how she came to be accused: A bank investigator reported to Montgomery County police that facial recognition technology had identified Williams as the suspect in the Maryland fraud cases.
Montgomery County police did not disclose that Williams had been identified using facial recognition when they sought charges against her, according to police records.
Several criminal justice experts said the use of facial recognition should have been disclosed in the police department’s incident report and application for charges.
Facial Recognition Glasses Will Arm Sexual Predators, Meta Is Warned
A coalition of more than 70 civil liberties and advocacy groups has urged Meta to abandon plans to introduce facial recognition technology in its smart glasses, warning the feature could be misused by stalkers, abusers and law enforcement agencies, according to WIRED. The groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, raised concerns over a reported feature internally called “Name Tag”.
According to reports by The New York Times, the tool would allow users to identify people in real time through the artificial intelligence system built into Meta’s Ray-Ban and Oakley smart glasses. According to WIRED, campaigners argue the technology could allow individuals to identify strangers in public without their knowledge or consent. They say this could expose vulnerable people to stalking, harassment and abuse, particularly in sensitive spaces such as protests, places of worship and medical facilities.
In a letter to Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, the coalition said such risks cannot be addressed through design changes or opt-out systems, as bystanders would have no realistic way to avoid being scanned.
AI Chatbots Give Misleading Medical Advice 50% of the Time, Study Finds
Artificial intelligence-driven chatbots are giving users problematic medical advice about half the time, according to a new study, highlighting the health risks of the technology that’s becoming increasingly integral in day-to-day life.
Researchers from the US, Canada and the UK evaluated five popular platforms — ChatGPT, Gemini, Meta AI, Grok and DeepSeek — by asking each of them 10 questions across five health categories. Out of the total responses, about 50% were deemed problematic, including almost 20% that were highly problematic, according to findings published this week in medical journal BMJ Open.
The chatbots performed relatively better on closed-ended prompts and questions related to vaccines and cancer, and worse on open-ended prompts and in areas like stem cells and nutrition, according to the study.
