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A woman tests Vueling’s new biometric recognition system at El Prat airport, January 19, 2023, in El Prat de Llobregat, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. 

David Zorrakino | Europa Press | Getty Images

As end-of-summer travel lines back up at TSA airport checkpoints in the U.S., one overseas airport is going all-in on a biometric passenger experience. The Smart Travel Project at Zayed International Airport in Abu Dhabi will involve biometric sensors at every airport identification checkpoint by 2025.

Airport security and travel experts have generally cheered the move.

“They are boldly moving forward in adopting facial recognition as the means to let travelers into their system, and I commend them for doing it,” said Sheldon Jacobson, an engineering and computer science professor at the University of Illinois. Jacobson has been studying airport security since the 1990s and helped the TSA develop its pre-screening program, which allows some travelers in the U.S. to skip the checkpoints. “Facial recognition is the future, and we will start to get intelligent with airport security and focus on the traveler rather than the items they bring. By doing that, you create a different paradigm,” Jacobson said. “What they are doing in Abu Dhabi is just the beginning, but it has to start somewhere.”

Going completely paperless from the parking garage to your seat-back tray table is unnerving to some who wonder if a Crowdstrike-type outage could bring down fully electronic boarding systems and grind travel to a halt. But Jacobson says those are very rare events, and even if the system completely shut down because of an outage, the net benefits of a biometric travel experience over time will outweigh the costs.

Zayed International Airport’s program relies on a partnership with the government. The UAE’s Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs & Port Security collects biometrics from any traveler arriving in the UAE for the first time. The airport then uses this database to verify passengers passing checkpoints. The airport did not respond to a request for comment on its plans. Saeed Saif Al Khaili, General Director at the United Arab Emirate’s Federal Authority for Identity, Citizenship, Customs, and Port Security, said in a recent press release that the Biometric Smart Travel project “aims to enhance the travel experience at Zayed International Airport from curb to gate, ensuring high levels of security and safety.”

Jacobson says the TSA tends to move more slowly and incrementally on changes, and that the UAE’s political system allows for faster implementation of programs, so this all-encompassing collection of biometric data likely wouldn’t fly in the U.S., at least not now. Whenever new biometric programs are introduced, he said, there is “tremendous pushback.”

Still, the U.S. public appears to be getting more comfortable with usage of biometrics at airports.

According to data analytics firm J.D. Power and Associates, a majority (53%) of those surveyed at major U.S. airports say biometrics in airports are a good idea or they are willing to use a biometric security check. An additional 12% say they are a good idea but have privacy concerns.

Among the concerns expressed are what type of data someone would need to give during the biometric enrollment process, and whether biometric security processes will be used to track movements throughout the airport, or if biometric data will be used outside the airport.

“To make the technology more widespread and allow airports and travelers to take advantage of it, airports should establish clear guidelines and processes and make travelers aware of potential uses. Buy-in from travelers is essential,” says Mike Taylor, J.D. Power’s senior managing director of travel, hospitality, and retail.

Shawn DuBravac, futurist and author of “Digital Destiny: How the New Age of Data Will Transform the Way We Work, Live, and Communicate,” said he believes biometrics will transform travel. “While we’ve seen growing use of biometric sensors to streamline travel, the vision of a fully paperless experience by next year is incredibly ambitious,” he said.

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Travel veterans generally agree that some aspects of biometrics will be involved in future airport visits if they aren’t already. DuBravac sees biometrics at airports in the U.S. used as a tool to make the human element more responsive.

“Instead of managing mundane tasks like document verification, personnel can provide higher levels of customer service, assist travelers with special needs, and ensure that the overall passenger experience is efficient and welcoming. Automating routine processes will empower a more human experience,” he said.

Billionaire Elon Musk lauded Zayed’s innovation, commenting on X in response to a video that showed a traveler breezing through check-in at the Abu Dhabi airport that the U.S. needs to “catch up.”

“Musk’s comments are close to wishful thinking,” said Irina Tsukerman, a national security lawyer and fellow at the Arabian Peninsula Institute. She noted that privacy concerns and costs would likely prevent the implementation of a whole biometric airport experience in the U.S.

“This worked in Abu Dhabi because UAE is a small, wealthy monarchy with a high degree of population trust in the government and sufficient resources to devote to technical innovation,”  Tsukerman said. The same ingredients aren’t in place in the U.S. “Transition to full automation for all eligible travelers will be time-consuming, onerous, expensive, and meet resistance from airport worker unions,” she said.

Despite Musk dinging U.S. airports, it isn’t like there isn’t a biometric presence in the United States.

In 2018, LAX became one of the first airports in the United States to pilot biometric boarding, and today, it is used as an option for qualifying passengers.

“At LAX, we use biometrics to support our airline partners and federal authorities to speed up the process of boarding international departing flights,” said Ian Law, chief digital transformation officer, Los Angeles World Airports, which includes LAX. There are up to four biometric lanes at each international departure gate and facial recognition technology can be used to do touchless, paperless traveler verification.

“Airlines are able to significantly reduce the time needed to board a flight, cutting the time travelers stand in line,” Law said.

While no U.S. airports are close to Abu Dhabi’s goal of a completely biometric airport, plenty of airports in the United States at least use some biometrics. According to the TSA, its PreCheck option is currently available at more than 200 airports with over 90 participating airlines nationwide and has a voluntary facial recognition component. To be approved for PreCheck, participants fill out an online form, pay a fee, undergo a background check, an in-person interview, and can opt-in for a facial recognition scan.

Clear, a publicly trading company, has also made inroads into more than 55 U.S. airports, allowing those who pay a fee and undergo prescreening to skip the lines and board biometrically. The service has made some lawmakers balk at creating a tiered system of travelers, and in California a group of lawmakers tried – but failed — earlier this year to restrict Clear.

Travel technology provider Amadeus is not involved in the Abu Dhabi airport’s biometric program but has them at other airports, such as Dubai, Vancouver, Perth, and London’s Heathrow airport. Chris Keller, vice president of airport and airline operations at Amadeus, says that for the foreseeable future, airports will be able to implement paper backups if there is a technological issue. “We expect increasing numbers of passengers to use biometrics, but there will always be a group, perhaps those that need special assistance or premium passengers, who will choose an agent-assisted experience and prefer a paper document,” Keller said.

Jacobson says that would-be criminals will be thwarted by the fact that their faces will be known in a biometric airport system. “Once the person is known this has a deterrence effect and drives down the risk,” he said. But he also indicated that Musk’s comments lack proper context. “It is not that we are behind, this is an incremental process of growth and development,” he said. “We won’t get there this week. It takes a certain amount of will and proof of concept.”

For example, when PreCheck in was rolled out in 2011 it had taken eight years from proposal to implementation.

“People are uncomfortable with change, anytime you make changes we have to do it more efficiently, more securely and less intrusively,” Jacobson said.

In the U.S., it’ll probably be awhile until getting from terminal check-in to airplane seat involves just showing your face.

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Amazon launches fixed pricing for treatment of conditions such as hair loss. Hims & Hers stock drops 15%

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Amazon launches fixed pricing for treatment of conditions such as hair loss. Hims & Hers stock drops 15%

A worker delivers Amazon packages in San Francisco on Oct. 24, 2024.

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Amazon on Thursday announced Prime members can access new fixed pricing for treatment of conditions like erectile dysfunction and men’s hair loss, its latest effort to compete with other direct-to-consumer marketplaces such as Hims & Hers Health and Ro.

Shares of Hims & Hers fell as much as 17% on Thursday, on pace for its worst day.

Amazon said in a blog post that Prime members can see the cost of a telehealth visit and their desired treatment before they decide to proceed with care for five common issues. Patients can access treatment for anti-aging skin care starting at $10 a month; motion sickness for $2 per use; erectile dysfunction at $19 a month; eyelash growth at $43 a month, and men’s hair loss for $16 a month by using Amazon’s savings benefit Prime Rx at checkout.

Amazon acquired primary care provider One Medical for roughly $3.9 billion in July 2022, and Thursday’s announcement builds on its existing pay-per-visit telehealth offering. Video visits through the service cost $49, and messaging visits cost $29 where available. Users can get treatment for more than 30 common conditions, including sinus infection and pink eye.

Medications filled through Amazon Pharmacy are eligible for discounted pricing and will be delivered to patients’ doors in standard Amazon packaging. Prime members will pay for the consultation and medication, but there are no additional fees, the blog post said.

Amazon has been trying to break into the lucrative health-care sector for years. The company launched its own online pharmacy in 2020 following its acquisition of PillPack in 2018. Amazon introduced, and later shuttered, a telehealth service called Amazon Care, as well as a line of health and wellness devices.

The company has also discontinued a secretive effort to develop an at-home fertility tracker, CNBC reported Wednesday.

— CNBC’s Annie Palmer contributed to this report.

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WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning says censorship is still ‘a dominant threat’

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WikiLeaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning says censorship is still 'a dominant threat'

Chelsea Manning: Censorship still a dominant threat

Former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning says censorship is still “a dominant threat,” advocating for a more decentralized internet to help better protect individuals online.

Her comments come amid ongoing tension linked to online safety rules, with some tech executives recently seeking to push back over content moderation concerns.

Speaking to CNBC’s Karen Tso at the Web Summit tech conference in Lisbon, Portugal, on Wednesday, Manning said that one way to ensure online privacy could be “decentralized identification,” which gives individuals the ability to control their own data.

“Censorship is a dominant threat. I think that it is a question of who’s doing the censoring, and what the purpose is — and also censorship in the 21st century is more about whether or not you’re boosted through like an algorithm, and how the fine-tuning of that seems to work,” Manning said.

“I think that social media and the monopolies of social media have sort of gotten us used to the fact that certain things that drive engagement will be attractive,” she added.

“One of the ways that we can sort of countervail that is to go back to the more decentralized and distribute the internet of the early ’90s, but make that available to more people.”

Nym Technologies Chief Security Officer Chelsea Manning at a press conference held with Nym Technologies CEO Harry Halpin in the Media Village to present NymVPN during the second day of Web Summit on November 13, 2024 in Lisbon, Portugal. 

Horacio Villalobos | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Asked how tech companies could make money in such a scenario, Manning said there would have to be “a better social contract” put in place to determine how information is shared and accessed.

“One of the things about distributed or decentralized identification is that through encryption you’re able to sort of check the box yourself, instead of having to depend on the company to provide you with a check box or an accept here, you’re making that decision from a technical perspective,” Manning said.

‘No longer secrecy versus transparency’

Manning, who works as a security consultant at Nym Technologies, a company that specializes in online privacy and security, was convicted of espionage and other charges at a court-martial in 2013 for leaking a trove of secret military files to online media publisher WikiLeaks.

She was sentenced to 35 years in prison, but was later released in 2017, when former U.S. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence.

Asked to what extent the environment has changed for whistleblowers today, Manning said, “We’re at an interesting time because information is everywhere. We have more information than ever.”

She added, “Countries and governments no longer seem to invest the same amount of time and effort in hiding information and keeping secrets. What countries seem to be doing now is they seem to be spending more time and energy spreading misinformation and disinformation.”

Manning said the challenge for whistleblowers now is to sort through the information to understand what is verifiable and authentic.

“It’s no longer secrecy versus transparency,” she added.

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SoftBank-backed fintech Zopa aims to double profit this year as it eyes 2025 current account launch

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SoftBank-backed fintech Zopa aims to double profit this year as it eyes 2025 current account launch

Jaidev Janardana, CEO of U.K. digital bank Zopa.

Zopa

LISBON, Portugal — British online lender Zopa is on track to double profits and increase annual revenue by more than a third this year amid bumper demand for its banking services, the company’s CEO told CNBC.

Zopa posted revenues of £222 million ($281.7 million) in 2023 and is expecting to cross the £300 million revenue milestone this year — that would mark a 35% annual jump.

The 2024 estimates are based on unaudited internal figures.

The firm also says it is on track to increase pre-tax profits twofold in 2024, after hitting £15.8 million last year.

Zopa, a regulated bank that is backed by Japanese giant SoftBank, has plans to venture into the world of current accounts next year as it looks to focus more on new products.

The company currently offers credit cards, personal loans and savings accounts that it offers through a mobile app — similar to other digital banks such as Monzo and Revolut which don’t operate physical branches.

“The business is doing really well. In 2024, we’ve hit or exceeded the plans across all metrics,” CEO Jaidev Janardana told CNBC in an interview Wednesday.

He said the strong performance is coming off the back of gradually improving sentiment in the U.K. economy, where Zopa operates exclusively.

Commenting on Britain’s macroeconomic conditions, Janardana said, “While it has been a rough few years, in terms of consumers, they have continued to feel the pain slightly less this year than last year.”

The market is “still tight,” he noted, adding that fintech offerings such as Zopa’s — which typically provide higher savings rates than high-street banks — become “more important” during such times.

“The proposition has become more relevant, and while it’s tight for customers, we have had to be much more constrained in terms of who we can lend to,” he said, adding that Zopa has still been able to grow despite that.

A big priority for the business going forward is product, Janardana said. The firm is developing a current account product which would allow users to spend and manage their money more easily, in a similar fashion to mainstream banking providers like HSBC and Barclays, as well as fintech upstarts such as Monzo.

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“We believe that there is more that the consumer can have in the current account space,” Janardana said. “We expect that we will launch our current account with the general public sometime next year.”

Janardana said consumers can expect a “slick” experience from Zopa’s current account offering, including the ability to view and manage multiple account bank accounts from one interface and access to competitive savings rates.

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