Welcome to Axis ProRata, a podcast that takes just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech business and politics.

I'm Dan Permack. On today's show, U.S. media asks for an antitrust waiver and what we learned from the latest big tech IPO.

But first, the fight over facial recognition. So earlier this week, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency announced that up to 100,000 traveler files were hacked.

More specifically, these were photos of travelers at the point of entry, plus associated license plate photos.

Now, that a government agency was hacked isn't surprising. That has happened a lot.

But it was a bit of a wake-up call about just how much facial imaging data the government is collecting on us and the lack of relevant guardrails.

It was a major topic of conversation during a recent congressional hearing where there was rare bipartisan consensus that facial recognition is ripe for government abuse,

with lawmakers like T-partier Mark Meadows and progressive leader Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both suggesting that

if private companies don't begin addressing such concerns, legislators will. Just what

government intervention would mean in this case, however, remains pretty unclear. In 15 seconds,

we'll go deeper on facial recognition, including where the technology currently stands and how

we're being surveilled, with Axios AI reporter Kavei Waddell.

But first, this.

Axios chief technology correspondent, Enah Freed, shares breaking news and analysis

on the most consequential companies and players in tech, from the Valley to D.C.

Subscribe to get smarter faster at signup.axios.com. And now back to the pro rata podcast.

We're joined now by Kave Waddell, who covers all things artificial intelligence for Axios. Let's start

with this. You know, when you talk to technologists in almost any sector, they compare innovation

life cycles to baseball games. So in that spirit,

what inning are we in when it comes to facial recognition technology? Well, we might be somewhere

around the middle. You know, the game's kind of getting started, maybe three, four, in that the

technology is getting pretty good. It's starting to be rolled out fairly widely in, for example,

...