Evaluating the Contextual Integrity of False Positives in Algorithmic Travel Surveillance

TL;DR

This study assesses public attitudes towards algorithmic air travel surveillance, revealing high acceptance of false positives in a high-trust context and highlighting concerns about systemic privacy harms.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to estimate the threshold of false positives perceived as legitimate and explores public perception in a high-trust cultural setting.

Findings

High false positive counts are perceived as legitimate in Finland.

Public acceptance persists despite privacy concerns.

Systemic and statistical aspects of surveillance are often overlooked.

Abstract

International air travel is highly surveilled. While surveillance is deemed necessary for law enforcement to prevent and detect terrorism and other serious crimes, even the most accurate algorithmic mass surveillance systems produce high numbers of false positives. Despite the potential impact of false positives on the fundamental rights of millions of passengers, algorithmic travel surveillance is lawful in the EU. However, as the system's processing practices and accuracy are kept secret by law, it is unknown to what degree passengers are accepting of the system's interference with their rights to privacy and data protection. We conducted a nationally representative survey of the adult population of Finland (N=1550) to assess their attitudes towards algorithmic mass surveillance in air travel and its potential expansion to other travel contexts. Furthermore, we developed a novel approach for estimating the threshold, beyond which, the number of false positives breaches individuals' perception of contextual integrity. Surprisingly, when faced with a trade-off between privacy and security, even very high false positive counts were perceived as legitimate. This result could be attributed to Finland's high-trust cultural context, but also raises questions about people's capacity to account for privacy harms that happen to other people. We conclude by discussing how legal and ethical approaches to legitimising algorithmic surveillance based on individual rights may overlook the statistical or systemic properties of mass surveillance.