CLEAR Profit Rises as Senators Move for Opt-Out Face Scans
By Georgia Fearn
Shares of Clear Secure Inc. rose as much as 8% after the airport-security company beat third-quarter estimates and raised its cash-flow outlook, even as senators push a bipartisan bill to allow travelers to bypass face-scanning technology and watchdogs urge tighter limits on how checkpoints use travelers’ biometric data.
The New York-based identity verification company reported third-quarter revenue of $229.2 million, up 15.5% from a year earlier, and bookings of $260.1 million, up 14.3%. Operating profit rose to $52.6 million and net income to $45.1 million.
Clear reported 7.7 million active CLEAR+ members, up 7.5% across 60 airports and 328 TSA PreCheck enrollment locations. It has installed automated eGates at 10 airports and plans to expand that to 30 by year-end, with “network-wide” deployment expected in 2026. The gates use facial recognition and other biometrics to match passengers to their IDs in seconds before TSA screening.
That expansion comes as a record number of Americans travel by plane, with U.S. airlines projecting to carry over 31 million passengers over the Thanksgiving holiday.
It's also colliding with a legal debate over how airport facial recognition can be used. In May, Senators Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, and John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, introduced a bill that would amend federal aviation law to make human ID checks the default at TSA lanes. The bill would require travelers to opt in before their faces are scanned and limit how long biometric data can be retained or reused.
Those limits would make it harder for TSA and private contractors to treat facial recognition as the default and could shrink the pool of passengers who consent, weakening one of the main selling points of Clear’s automated lanes.
Airline and airport industry groups, including Airlines for America, the U.S. Travel Association and Airports Council International-North America, have urged the Senate Commerce Committee to reject the measure, warning that limits on facial recognition could “significantly increase wait times” and derail planned automation at checkpoints. TSA’s own face-matching system is already in use at around 80 airports and projected to expand to more than 400.
Civil liberties groups have pressed in the opposite direction. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based digital rights group, said TSA’s face scans are opt-out “in name only” and “closer to a mandatory program” given poor signage and the pressure travelers face to move quickly through security, according to Jeramie Scott, the group’s senior counsel and director of its Surveillance Oversight Program.
The growing use of biometrics by private vendors such as Clear “only increases the privacy risks,” because companies are likely to expand how they use biometric data in the absence of federal safeguards, Scott said.
Will Owen, communications director at the New York-based Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said “the airport is an especially intimidating environment to opt out of facial recognition, so it’s hardly voluntary in practice.”
Shares of Clear Secure Inc. rose as much as 8% after the airport-security company beat third-quarter estimates and raised its cash-flow outlook, even as senators push a bipartisan bill to allow travelers to bypass face-scanning technology and watchdogs urge tighter limits on how checkpoints use travelers’ biometric data.
The New York-based identity verification company reported third-quarter revenue of $229.2 million, up 15.5% from a year earlier, and bookings of $260.1 million, up 14.3%. Operating profit rose to $52.6 million and net income to $45.1 million.
Clear reported 7.7 million active CLEAR+ members, up 7.5% across 60 airports and 328 TSA PreCheck enrollment locations. It has installed automated eGates at 10 airports and plans to expand that to 30 by year-end, with “network-wide” deployment expected in 2026. The gates use facial recognition and other biometrics to match passengers to their IDs in seconds before TSA screening.
That expansion comes as a record number of Americans travel by plane, with U.S. airlines projecting to carry over 31 million passengers over the Thanksgiving holiday.
It's also colliding with a legal debate over how airport facial recognition can be used. In May, Senators Jeff Merkley, an Oregon Democrat, and John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, introduced a bill that would amend federal aviation law to make human ID checks the default at TSA lanes. The bill would require travelers to opt in before their faces are scanned and limit how long biometric data can be retained or reused.
Those limits would make it harder for TSA and private contractors to treat facial recognition as the default and could shrink the pool of passengers who consent, weakening one of the main selling points of Clear’s automated lanes.
Airline and airport industry groups, including Airlines for America, the U.S. Travel Association and Airports Council International-North America, have urged the Senate Commerce Committee to reject the measure, warning that limits on facial recognition could “significantly increase wait times” and derail planned automation at checkpoints. TSA’s own face-matching system is already in use at around 80 airports and projected to expand to more than 400.
Civil liberties groups have pressed in the opposite direction. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based digital rights group, said TSA’s face scans are opt-out “in name only” and “closer to a mandatory program” given poor signage and the pressure travelers face to move quickly through security, according to Jeramie Scott, the group’s senior counsel and director of its Surveillance Oversight Program.
The growing use of biometrics by private vendors such as Clear “only increases the privacy risks,” because companies are likely to expand how they use biometric data in the absence of federal safeguards, Scott said.
Will Owen, communications director at the New York-based Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said “the airport is an especially intimidating environment to opt out of facial recognition, so it’s hardly voluntary in practice.”
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