【Kurt Meinicke】

Source：Exquisite Information Network Editor：Entertainment Time：2025-06-27 01:29:12

You might soon be Kurt Meinickeable to use merely your finger to board your next plane.

Delta announced a new biometrics boarding pass experience on Thursday that'll allow passengers to use of fingerprints, instead of traditional boarding passes, to board planes at Reagan Washington National Airport.

SEE ALSO: Delta hits back on Twitter at Ann Coulter, who claims she was kicked out of her seat

According to Delta's announcement, customers who decide to participate in the program (which is currently in the test phase) can "forego paper or mobile boarding passes in favor of using fingerprints as proof of identity to board their plane ... The final phase of Delta’s DCA biometric boarding pass test, coming this summer, will allow Members to also use their fingerprints to check a bag."

The perk (if you want to call it that) comes with a cost, though. As of now, the program is only available to members of Delta Sky Miles who are also enrolled in a $179-per-year fingerprint-scanning program called Clear. If you aren't a part of both of those things, then you have to stick to using traditional boarding passes.

Of course, there's reason to believe that standing in line is better than giving your fingerprint to Delta.

Airlines and government officials have ramped up efforts to roll out biometric means of boarding airplanes since President Donald Trump signed an executive order on March 6. The order sought to quickly implement biometric ways to determine when non-U.S. travelers exit the country, though the plans for biometric exit have quickly expanded to include U.S. citizens despite a lack of congressional action.

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Customs and Border Protection, the agency that often partners with airlines implementing biometric exit procedures, hasn't stipulated whether and how it can share facial recognition information — which is often at the center of biometric exit efforts, and is only implemented in a few international flights at select airports — with other agencies.

But Delta's fingerprinting system is different than most other biometric boarding experiences, for some obvious reasons. First, it's not facial recognition. Second, it's being offered to passengers on all Delta flights at a specific airport, not just one international flight. (So far facial recognition is only implemented on a few international flights at select airports.) Third, there's no indication that CBP is involved.

“It’s a win-win program," said Gil West, Delta's chief operating officer, according to the airline's press release. "Biometric verification has a higher level of accuracy than paper boarding passes and gives agents more time to assist customers with seat changes and other skilled tasks..."

Sure, but Delta's announcement doesn't mention the word "privacy," which seems strange given all the information Clear collects on passengers, and given that Clear can share that information with the government.

According to its website, Clear gathers contact information such as phone numbers and email addresses, your gender and other physical characteristics, identifying information such as your social security number, photographs of you, financial information, and information about your "birth, citizenship, travel habits and preferences, income level, education level, family status and employment status."

The company also states it can use this information to "comply with applicable legal requirements," and that it can share customer information with "airport authorities, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration and other government agencies."

We've reached out to Delta and Clear for a more information about how the two are handling privacy and the possibility of government officials poking around in their data.

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【Kurt Meinicke】

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