Amazon is being sued for not informing its NYC store customers about facial recognition

An Amazon lawsuit filed Thursday alleges it failed to warn New York City customers that facial recognition technology was monitoring them.

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Lawyers for Alfredo Perez, an Amazon Go convenience store customer, filed a class-action lawsuit against the company, claiming that the company neglected to inform customers that the technology was being used in the convenience store. In New York City, businesses need to post signs as soon as they begin tracking customers' biometric information, such as their facial scans or fingerprints, as a result of a 2021 law that requires them to do so.

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Amazon introduced its Go stores in 2018, promising customers that they could walk in, take whatever products they wanted off the shelves and leave without checking out. Visitors' actions are monitored and charges are applied to their accounts when they leave the store. The company's website indicates that it has 10 stores in Manhattan, all of which were opened the following year.

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Amazon only recently put up signs informing New York customers about its use of facial recognition technology, more than a year after the law went into effect. A request for comment was not immediately returned by Amazon.

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In order for Amazon Go to successfully track its customers and their purchases, it must continuously monitor their bodies, according to the lawsuit.

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“For Amazon Go's ‘Just Walk Out’ technology to work, biometric identifier information of customers is constantly collected and used, including scanning palms to identify customers. The software uses computer vision algorithms, deep learning algorithms, and sensor fusion to identify customers, track their movements in stores, and determine what they purchase based on the shape and size of their bodies,” it says.

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Legal advocacy group Surveillance Technology Oversight Project represents Perez in this case.

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Albert Cahn, project director, said in a text that global tech giants cannot ignore local privacy laws. “It shows how much local governments can do to protect their residents as we await long overdue federal privacy laws.”