Casinos have completely different goals in regards to facial recognition technology. They’re looking for specific people that do things like count cards, pick pockets, fraudsters, etc. If someone matches they’ll have a security person go and do a real-world double-check that only requires knowing the person’s profile (which will include height and estimated weight, tattoos, typical behaviors, and other unique features).

The TSA is looking for anything suspicious. And “suspicious” has an extremely broad meaning when it comes to a poorly-paid person who would be over the moon if they actually caught a real criminal/terrorist instead of just spending day after day being a professional annoyer of completely normal people.

If the facial recognition system thinks a person doesn’t match their picture ID that doesn’t mean they’re a criminal, a terrorist, or any problem whatsoever. It just means that the system disagrees with their appearance. Is that enough to warrant harassing someone? Making them miss their flight? Invading their privacy and permanently recording all sorts of information about them in the TSA’s databases?

Pretty sure Wal*Mart and Target also use it in their stores.