Robin Wilton's esoterica

At least, not if you were one of the unlucky ones affected by "teething" problems at Heathrow's new Terminal 5.

I haven't used T5 yet, but from the press reports the keywords appear to range from "glitch" (BBC) to "farce" (FT). I know it's a huge undertaking, had to be achieved without disrupting the normal operation of the rest of the airport, and so on, while moving huge quantities of materiel and large numbers of staff from one end of the airport to the other, so it's possible that these were indeed just a few initial problems with the use of a new large-scale and complex system.

Nevertheless, it does seem that some of the problems are ones of,shall we say, 'questionable competence' rather than complexity. For instance, one wheelchair-bound passenger arrived on an inbound flight and then found he couldn't get into the air-side part of the terminal because there was a step. The Disability and Discrimination Act legislated on this back in 1995 - and its provisions became mandatory in 2004.

Then there's the question of whether passengers should be fingerprinted in order to get into the departure lounge. The airport operator, BAA, is reported as saying this (you may need to register to view the full article):

"Fingerprinting of passengers postponed

The introduction of fingerprinting for some passengers at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 was postponed on Wednesday, just hours before the opening of the building for commercial operations.

The data protection watchdog said at the weekend it had launched an investigation into the plans to fingerprint domestic passengers and international passengers transferring on to domestic flights at T5.

BAA, Heathrow’s operator, said on Wednesday that following meetings with the Information Commissioner’s Office and the Border and Immigration Agency, the introduction of fingerprinting would be delayed temporarily.

It added that Terminal 5 security would be opened on Thursday using a photographic identification process, which was similar to one used for several years at Gatwick. “We will be working closely with the information commissioner and the Home Office over the next few weeks to agree the best approach going forward.”

It wants to carry out fingerprinting to ensure its common departures lounge did not breach border controls."

Several things need to be called out, here.

Now, I've heard the same logic applied at Gatwick, Manchester and Bristol airports, where they photograph you at outbound passport control. There, though, I was told that it was to ensure that domestic passengers couldn't borrow the boarding cards of international passengers and use them to take advantage of the tax breaks on discounted booze and ciggies... as the two categories of passenger are not segregated in the departure lounge.

1 - If the purpose of fingerprinting (or photographing) is to stop unauthorised access to tax-free shopping, then say so. It's illegal to say you're capturing personal data for border control purposes and then use it to stop people buying discounted perfume.

2 - Solve the problem by means which do not require the unnecessary disclosure of personal data: if the real issue is about tax-free shopping, then require people to show that the name on their boarding pass matches the name on their identity document. Capturing their biometrics is entirely unnecessary for the purpose, and that violates the Third Data Protection Principle - that the data collected should not be excessive in relation to the prupose for which it is collected.

3 - As Richard Veryard pertinently wonders... is capturing a facial biometric any less privacy-intrusive than taking your fingerprints? Arguably, it is more privacy-hostile, as it can be done passively with little or no user awareness, whereas fingerprinting at least requires a rudimentary 'disclosure protocol' between the official and the traveller. 

4- Design the airport better... for goodness' sake - this is not the first airport terminal which has ever been built. Other European airports have to cope with the distinction between EU and non-EU travellers, and many of them have had to do so without the advantage of having been built  from scratch. Some have retro-fitted physical barriers to make that distinction enforceable (for instance, Madrid and Venice) because they were built before the Schengen principles were brought into force.

As seems all too often to be the case, though, the default policy is based on undervaluing the citizen's personal data and assuming that capturing it harms no-one. At least, no-one of any consequence.