Amazon didn’t alert its New York City customers that they were being monitored by technology that tracks their body size and shape as well as their palm prints, a lawsuit filed Thursday said.
In the class-action suit, attorneys for Alfredo Perez said the company failed to inform visitors to Amazon Go convenience stores that the technology was in use. Thanks to a 2021 law, New York is the only major US city requiring businesses to post signs if they are 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, and leave without having to check out. The company tracks 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 Amazon recently posted signs informing New York customers about its use of biometric recognition technology, more than a year after the disclosure law went into effect.
The lawsuit states that for Amazon Go to successfully track its customers and the items they carry, their bodies would have to be constantly monitored.
“To make this ‘Just Walk Out’ technology possible, Amazon Go stores continually collect and use biometric identifier information from customers, including scanning the palms of some customers to identify them and using computer vision, deep learning algorithms and sensors.” Fusion involves measuring the body size and shape of each customer to identify customers, track where they go in stores, and determine what they’ve bought.
An Amazon spokesperson said that its stores do not use facial recognition technology, and claimed that the technology used to differentiate shoppers does not constitute biometric technology. He declined to comment on the signs.
“We do not use facial recognition technology in any of our stores, and the claims made are false,” the spokesperson said over email. “Amazon One, our contactless, palm-based identification and payment service, is one of the access options offered. With a credit card and the Amazon app at select Amazon Go stores. Only shoppers who choose to enroll in Amazon One and choose to be identified by waving their palm over an Amazon One device, have their palm-biometric data securely collected, and appropriate privacy disclosures are provided to these individuals during the enrollment process. The customer is always in control when they choose to be recognized using their palm.
Perez is represented by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a New York legal advocacy group dedicated to privacy protections.
“This means that even a global tech giant cannot ignore local privacy laws,” STOP project director Albert Kahn said in a text message. “As we look forward to long-pending federal privacy laws, this shows that local governments can do much more to protect their residents.”