The confusion is by design — or at least by convenience. You hit a camera at the TSA podium, another at the gate, another at the international exit, and a private one if you're a CLEAR member, and they all feel like "the airport scanning my face." They're not the same thing, and your rights at each are different. Knowing which is which is the whole point of this guide.
The systems you'll actually encounter
Checkpoint identity verification
The camera at the TSA podium that compares your live face to the photo on your ID. For domestic travelers this is currently presented as optional — there's signage stating you can decline and have the officer do a standard manual ID check instead. TSA's stated policy is that photos for this 1:1 ID match are not retained for most travelers (used for the comparison, then discarded), though limited testing has been an exception.
Biometric Entry/Exit
Customs and Border Protection's face-matching at international arrival and departure. This is the strictest one: U.S. citizens can opt out and request manual document review, but most non-citizens are required to submit to it by law. CBP matches your gate photo against government photo galleries (passport, visa).
Biometric boarding
Delta, United, American and others offer face boarding at the gate, often built on the CBP gallery for international flights. This is generally opt-out — you can hand over your boarding pass and passport instead. The airline's convenience layer sits on top of the CBP match for international; domestic airline face features are the carrier's own program.
CLEAR
A paid, fully voluntary commercial service. You enroll your face (and irises) once; CLEAR stores that template and uses it to verify you in their lanes. Critically, the same CLEAR template is reused at stadiums and other venues — so this enrollment reaches well beyond the airport.
Your opt-out rights, plainly
- TSA podium (domestic): You can decline. Say "I'd like to opt out of the photo," and the officer does a manual ID check. Federal policy and posted signage support this, and declining is not supposed to cost you your place in line or trigger extra screening. If an officer pushes back, you can ask for a supervisor.
- CBP entry/exit (international): U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents can opt out and request manual processing. Most foreign nationals cannot — biometric exit is mandated for them by statute. This is the one place "just opt out" advice is wrong for a large group of travelers.
- Airline biometric boarding: Opt-out is available — present your physical boarding pass and ID at the gate. For international flights the underlying match may still be the CBP one (see above); the airline layer is the part you can skip.
- CLEAR: Entirely optional — it's a product you buy. You can decline to enroll, and if you've already enrolled you can delete your account, which removes the stored template from CLEAR's airport and venue contexts.
What "opt out" does and doesn't protect
Declining the camera prevents that capture and match in that moment. It's worth doing. But be realistic about its limits:
- Government galleries already hold your face. CBP matches against passport and visa photos you already submitted. Opting out of the gate camera doesn't remove your face from those galleries — it just declines this particular live comparison.
- Opting out is per-encounter. There's no master "never scan me" setting; you re-decline each time, at each podium and gate.
- It's a different world from commercial face engines. Government and airline systems are 1:1 identity checks against documents you provided. The commercial face-search engines we remove people from are 1:many systems that scraped the public web without your involvement. Opting out at the airport does nothing to those engines, and removing yourself from those engines does nothing to TSA or CBP.
Where face-engine removal fits (and doesn't)
We want to be precise here, because "facial recognition at the airport" and "facial recognition that found your name from a photo" get lumped together constantly:
- Government / airline scanning: these check your live face against an ID or government photo. You manage them by exercising your opt-out rights at the checkpoint. Face Privacy has no role here — there's no consumer "remove me from TSA" because it's a document match, not a scraped database.
- CLEAR and venue vendors: CLEAR is a stored commercial template you can delete via your account. Stadium vendors (Wicket, Veridas) have their own enrollment/deletion flows — see our stadium face-entry breakdown.
- Consumer face-search engines (PimEyes, FaceCheck.ID, Lenso.ai): this is what we remove you from. These are the engines that turn a random photo of you into your identity. They have nothing to do with the airport — but they're the ones that make you findable from a single picture anywhere in the world.
A sensible travel posture
- Opt out at the TSA podium and airline gate if you'd rather not be scanned — it's quick and it's your right.
- Know your CBP status: if you're a citizen/resident you can decline international exit scanning; if you're a foreign national, it's generally required.
- Think twice before enrolling in CLEAR — and delete your account if you no longer want that template reused at venues.
- Handle the consumer engines separately. The thing that follows you home from the airport isn't the TSA camera — it's the face-search engines that can identify you from any photo. That's the standing problem worth solving.
You can decline the camera at the gate — but the engines that ID you from any photo need a different fix.
Airport scanning is a checkpoint you can opt out of. Consumer face-search engines are a standing database of your faceprint. We find those engines, file the removals, and keep you out as they recrawl.
Start your removals →