Biometric surveillance: Face-first plunge into dystopia

Flying into Dallas Fort Worth International Airport from Mexico in December, I queued in the immigration line for US citizens and was taken aback when – rather than request my passport – the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent simply instructed me to look at the camera and then pronounced my first name: "Maria?" Feeling an abrupt violation of my entire bodily autonomy, I nodded – and reckoned that it was perhaps easy to lose track of the rapid dystopian devolution of the world when one had spent the past two years hanging out on a beach in Oaxaca. A CBP poster promoting the transparent infringement on privacy was affixed to the airport wall, and featured a grey-haired man smiling suavely into the camera along with the text: "Our policies on privacy couldn't be more transparent. In my case, the process was not so fast, as I had to hand over my passport for physical scrutiny after I raised the agent's suspicions by being unable to answer in any remotely coherent fashion the ...