Border security

Homeland Security says Americans who don't want faces scanned leaving the country "shouldn't travel"

Homeland Security's advice for the millions of Americans traveling overseas who don't want to end up in its facial biometric database is simply not to travel.

That's according to the agency's own assessment document published earlier this year of a new so-called traveler verification project to "capture facial images of travelers" leaving the US.

The effort aims to help Customs and Border Protection (CBP) track non-immigrant foreigners and those who overstay their visas. To date, foreigners arriving in the US will have their photo and fingerprints recorded at the border, but Americans are exempt from turning over their biometrics.