N.Y. Amazon Go Stores Don't Fully Disclose Biometric Data Collection: Complaint

Amazon hasn't complied with the disclosure requirement of New York’s Biometric Identifier Information Law (BIIL) in its New York Amazon Go stores, alleged a privacy class action Thursday (docket 1:23-cv-02251) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan.

Brooklyn plaintiff Alfredo Rodriguez Perez visited a Manhattan Amazon Go store Jan. 30 that uses Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology. The technology uses computer vision, deep learning algorithms and sensor fusion to collect customers’ biometric identifier information, such as palm images and the size and shape of their body, and then transmits it to the company’s cloud servers, said the complaint. Customers’ movements are “closely tracked” by Amazon so it can associate shoppers with the products they touch to determine if they are removing an item from a shelf or returning it, the complaint said.

Just Walk Out technology benefits Amazon financially because it doesn’t have to employ workers to scan groceries, place items in bags or spend time accepting payments, said the complaint. When customers scan their palm upon entering an Amazon Go store, Amazon knows “who that person is and will charge that person’s Amazon account for any goods the person takes from the store,” it said.

When Rodriguez Perez entered the Amazon Go store in downtown Manhattan, he didn’t see a sign notifying customers that their biometric information was being collected, retained, converted or stored, said the complaint. New York’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) has made an 8.5 x 11-inch sign available to commercial establishments so they can comply with BIIL, it noted.

The plaintiff received a $13.17 receipt from Amazon after he left the store for items he had selected from shelves. If he had seen a sign at the store entrance informing him that the store collects, retains, converts or shares customers’ information, he would not have entered the store and made a purchase, he said. He mailed a letter a week later to the store notifying it of its obligation to post a sign telling customers about collecting their data and the store's noncompliance with the law. He has not made a purchase at an Amazon Go store since, he said.

Amazon didn't respond to the letter, he said, but on Tuesday, it posted a sign at that Amazon Go store and “at least some” of its other Go stores in New York notifying customers of the biometric information collection, the complaint said. But the sign didn’t comply with BIIL because it's not “clear and conspicuous” and didn’t explain fully its biometric identification collection process. Unlike the DCWP model sign, the complaint said, the placement of Amazon’s sign at its Rockefeller Center Go store “makes it all but impossible that customers entering on the opposite side (i.e., five doors down) will ever see, much less read, the sign,” it said.

The Amazon sign also doesn’t identify all the actions Amazon takes with respect to customers’ biometric information, the complaint said. The Amazon sign read: “Biometric information collected at this location. Amazon Go. This business uses an Amazon One device that collects and stores customers’ biometric identifier information. If you use Amazon One, your biometric information will be used to help identify you. No biometric information will be collected from customers who do not use an Amazon One palm scanner.”

Amazon’s sign only mentions “generally” that biometric information is collected at a store’s location, and when referencing the Amazon One palm scanner, it says the device “collects and stores customers’ biometric identifier information,” the complaint said. The sign doesn’t say Amazon converts or retains customers' biometric identifier information, “even though Amazon does covert and retain such information,” the complaint said.

“Most troubling,” said the complaint, is that Amazon’s sign says the scanner collects and stores biometric data from customers who use Amazon One but “expressly denies and disavows that Amazon Go stores collect customers’ biometric identifier information,” the complaint alleges. “It unequivocally states: ‘No biometric information will be collected from customers who do not use an Amazon One palm scanner,’” it said.

“The sign is telling customers that if they do not use the Amazon One palm scanner, their biometric identifier information will never be collected,” the complaint said, when Amazon Go stores “always collect, convert, store and retain biometric identifier information from every customer who enters the stores -- including those who don’t use the Amazon One palm scanner,” by using its technologies to “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.” Amazon didn’t comment Friday.

In addition to violation of BIIL, the plaintiff claims unjust enrichment. He seeks for himself and class members a permanent injunction against Amazon requiring it to comply with the New York biometrics law; an award of actual, real and statutory damages; reasonable attorneys’ fees, legal costs and pre- and post-judgment interest; plus payment of a “reasonable service award to Plaintiff in recognition of the services he has rendered” on behalf of the class.