Great, Now an Airline Is Normalizing Casual Fingerprinting

Delta Airlines announced Monday that it’srolling out biometric entryat its crease of drome lounges . With the press of two fingers , Delta members will be able to enter any of Delta ’s 50 undivided couch for drinks , comfortably unaware of the encroach dystopian biometric surveillance structure close up around travel .

Thanks to a partnership with Clear , a biometrics companyofferinga “ frictionless change of location experience , ” privileged jet - setters can use their fingerprints to enrol Delta Sky Clubs . The Sky Club , as one might imagine , is Delta ’s origin of airport waiting area loaded with drink , magazines , wi - fi , and snacks . Entry to the Sky Club is $ 59 a visit or $ 495 a year — a little Leontyne Price to devote for a respite from the unwashed masses . The fingerprint scan , however , are completely free .

Scanning the fingerprint of airport loungers is n’t Clear ’s only endeavour . For an yearly fee of $ 180 , Clear member are spirited by from prolonged security department seam and pat - down and instead assert their identity in ego - serve kiosks that cope with their irises and fingerprint against stored biometric data Clear keeps on data file .

As Delta ’s press release note , biometrics aresurging in airportsacross the globe . Travelers hate prospicient origin , invasive scanning , and crowded waiting areas , so Clear , Delta , and other airports have packaged biometric scanning as exuberant , exclusive , and above all else , extremely commodious . Anyone would be seduced by the opportunity to turn the 60 minutes long slog of airport security into something breezy and painless .

But , this veneer of comfort masks that biometrics are a descriptor of surveillance hotly contest by seclusion and civil familiarity experts . For representative , face up recognition in airports is consistently less accurate on cleaning woman and people of coloring , yet are asymmetricallyapplied against them as they travel . Clear utilise finger and iris data point , but Delta was the nation ’s first touse facial expression recognition to verify pass , again via autonomized ego - service of process stall .

At a time when hoi polloi should be more leery of biostatistics , drome are carefully rebranding surveillance as a luxury token . But , as people become more well-off with being poked , prodded , fingerprinted , and scanned as they travel , privateness is becoming a tight - evaporating luxury .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.