Entering a store, a restaurant or an arena in New York can also mean being recognized by a camera. The city allows commercial activities to use biometric technologies, including facial recognition, provided they comply with certain rules. A City Council proposal would now ban its use to identify customers.
The measure, Introduction 213, was presented by councilwoman Shahana Hanif at the beginning of the year. On Friday, August 14, Gothamist reported that the proposal obtained support from the Mamdani administration and the majority of members of the City Council, according to promoters and supporters. It hasn’t been approved yet.
The law would cover places of public accommodation, a category that includes many places and activities open to the public. The text would make it illegal to use biometric recognition technologies to verify or identify a customer and would introduce new safeguards for the information collected.
It would not be the first town rule on biometric data. Since 2021 some commercial activities that collect them must expose a notice at the entrance and cannot sell them or profit. The proposal in question would therefore change the principle: it would not be limited to adjusting the collection, but would prevent using those systems to recognize who enters.
The case that most of all brought the matter to the attention of the city is that of Madison Square Garden. The company that manages the arena uses facial recognition for security reasons and to identify people to whom access was prohibited. In recent years technology has ended in the center of controversy after being used also to identify lawyers belonging to studies involved in causes against companies attributable to the Garden’s proprietary group.
Friday, in front of the arena, politicians and associations for the protection of privacy have manifested asking to ban this practice. Madison Square Garden argues that the system contributes to the safety of people attending its facilities.
The measure would still have a much wider scope than the Garden. Stores, premises and other activities open to the public could not use the face or other biometric data to automatically establish the identity of a person.
The proposal still needs to complete its path to the City Council. The political support that has been raised in recent weeks makes it more concrete for the vote, but for the moment in New York the rules have not changed.
L’articolo Towards the ban on facial recognition in the premises of New York proviene da IlNewyorkese.
