Amazon did not alert its New York City customers that they were being monitored by facial recognition technology, a lawsuit filed Thursday alleges.
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.
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.
A man uses his smartphone to enter an Amazon Go convenience store in New York, on Jan. 28, 2022.
For Amazon Go to successfully track its customers and the items they take, it has to continuously monitor their bodies, the lawsuit says. »
