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Security


AMAZON SUED FOR NOT TELLING NEW YORK STORE CUSTOMERS ABOUT FACIAL RECOGNITION

Thanks to a 2021 law, New York is the only major American city to require
businesses to post signs letting customers know they’re tracking biometric
information.


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March 16, 2023, 11:50 AM EDT
By Kevin Collier

Amazon did not alert its New York City customers that they were being monitored
by facial recognition technology, a lawsuit filed Thursday alleges.

In a class-action suit, lawyers for Alfredo Perez said that the company failed
to tell visitors to Amazon Go convenience stores that the technology was in use.
Thanks to a 2021 law, New York is the only major American city to require
businesses to post signs if they’re tracking customers’ biometric information,
such as facial scans or fingerprints.





Amazon introduced its Go stores in 2018, promising that customers could walk in,
take whatever products they wanted off the shelves and leave without checking
out. The company monitors visitors’ actions and charges their accounts when they
leave the store. It opened its first New York location the following year, and
has 10 stores, all in Manhattan, according to its website.

The lawsuit says that Amazon only recently put up signs informing New York
customers of its use of facial recognition technology, more than a year after
the disclosure law went into effect. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a
request for comment.

A man uses his smartphone to enter an Amazon Go convenience store in New York,
on Jan. 28, 2022.Ted Shaffrey / AP file

For Amazon Go to successfully track its customers and the items they take, it
has to continuously monitor their bodies, the lawsuit says. 


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“To make this ‘Just Walk Out’ technology possible, the Amazon Go stores
constantly collect and use customers’ biometric identifier information,
including by scanning the palms of some customers to identify them and by
applying computer vision, deep learning algorithms, and sensor fusion that
measure the shape and size of each customer’s body to identify customers, track
where they move in the stores, and determine what they have purchased,” it says.



Perez is represented by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a legal
advocacy group devoted to New York privacy protections.

“It means that even a global tech giant can’t ignore local privacy laws,” Albert
Cahn, project director, said in a text message. “As we wait for long overdue
federal privacy laws, it shows there is so much local governments can do to
protect their residents.”

Kevin Collier

Kevin Collier is a reporter covering cybersecurity, privacy and technology
policy for NBC News.



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