by Solveig Singleton

About the author: Solveig Singleton is a lawyer and senior analyst with the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Project on Technology and Innovation.

The two dark-skinned young men, unshaven and heavily muscled, looked ominously foreign. No doubt more than one airline passenger breathed deeper in relief when security guards at the Roanoke, Virginia, airport pulled the men out of line to search their luggage and pat them down—once in the ticket line, again at the security gate and a third time before they boarded the plane. Three “random” searches to take a 20-minute flight.

Facial-recognition technology tied to a database of suspect terrorists, though, would have left the young men alone. My black-haired fiance and his brother are no threat. Their frightening musculature is cheerfully employed shifting furniture for...