Security and Departing Passenger Photographs

[Biggles]

Having flown from Manchester this week and gone through the rigors of security checks, which I don`t have a problem with, even if it only stops one terrorist or the more common problem of a drunken or criminal passenger upsetting every other passenger on a flight.

My question is, even on an internal flight we had photographs taken at the departure gate which was rightly compared to a driving licence or passport or other acceptable photo document in our possession, upon the return flight at the destination airport our photo document was compared with the now held photo taken at Manchester and presumably held on a huge data base of such passenger pictures.

Based on this it would seem that every passenger departing a UK airport is being photographed and that information along with confirmation documentation data ie passport details or driving licence detail is held on what must be a massive data base of peoples photographs and corresponding data pertinent to that person. WHAT is happening to that information and who is it distributed amongst ?

[ronturner]

Biggles,

I imagine the data base to which you refer is either:-

Languishing somewhere unused

or

Sold to a commercial enterprise for sales and marketing purposes.

Ron

[buspilot]

I remember several years ago, when this photographing departing passengers for security purposes started,that there were signs up at Gatwick ststing that the photos were destroyed after a short period of time and not kept on file.

[Biggles]

I think in this day and age the promise of destroying pictures should probably happen on paper, but in reality the and security services would find very handy.

#Ron I will wait and see how long before the telemarketing calls come offering me airline tickets or duty free items. LOL