In early February, I spent $171.59 to watch the Rangers play the Canucks at Madison Square Garden. I had no plans to watch the hockey game. I just wanted to know if my guest, Tia Garcia, a personal injury attorney, could come into the building.
We enter the security line and go through the metal detector. Then, as Ms. Garcia turned to pick up her bag from the conveyor belt, a security guard asked her to move to the side of her and show her driver’s license. “I am in trouble?” she asked.
The guard told her that she would have to wait for management to come talk to her.
He didn’t explain why, but we already knew: Ms. Garcia is one of thousands of attorneys on a ban list because her firms are involved in litigation against the arena’s parent company. While we were in line, facial recognition technology identified her.
“Have you been here before?” the guard asked. When Ms. Garcia told her that she had seen the Cavaliers play the Knicks a few weeks earlier, she expressed her surprise. At the time, Ms. Garcia had been wearing a medical mask, hat, and glasses. This time, her face was clearly visible.
Five minutes later, the security manager arrived to officially kick Ms. Garcia out. Although she expected it to happen, Ms. Garcia found the deployment of facial recognition technology to punish corporate enemies alarming. So did local legislators. The City Council convened an audience last month to discuss how Madison Square Garden and other local businesses were using the technology.
There were many questions to ask: Who is using it? Who are the people you are trying to keep out of your business? What do they do when technology makes a mistake and marks a resemblance? Mayor Eric Adams had recently encouraged businesses to use facial recognition to fight against theft. Who answered his call? If you steal once, are you banned for life?
But the Council had a problem. Madison Square Garden had not sent a representative, as requested. (A Madison Square Garden spokeswoman said the organization thought her point of view, that technology provides a safe and secure environment, was represented by others there.)
And no one in the audience knew what other companies were using the technology.
So I decided to find out. New York City has a quirky new law that makes it the only municipality in the country where a business that scans faces has to post a sign telling customers it’s doing so. After leaving the meeting, I set out on a walk for miles looking for those signs. They weren’t where I expected them to be.
A walk in privacy
I left the hearing in Lower Manhattan and walked south, past a Zara clothing store and a CVS. None had abiometric identifier information” disclosure, so presumably they were not using facial recognition technology.
“Biometric identifiers? What’s that?” asked an employee at the CVS gate when I told him about the sign he was looking for. “Biometric identifier” is a fancy term for a unique physical trait, such as a fingerprint, voiceprint, or scan. of someone’s face.
Facial recognition software typically trains itself on photos of millions of people, until it learns what to look for in an image to match one face to another. It’s not perfect, but it has become more accurate in recent years thanks to advances in artificial intelligence.
Typically, a store using facial recognition technology doesn’t try to identify every customer who comes through the door, but rather looks for faces that have been put on a watch list, such as previous shoplifters. Madison Square Garden has said it created its lawyer watch list by collecting faces from the websites of banned firms.
I walked a few more blocks south to what I thought would be a safe bet for that sign: Amazon Go, a convenience store where customers can pay with a palm print. The store was awash with cameras, sensors, and palm scanners, allowing shoppers to pick up items and simply walk out without needing to stop at a register. There was a featured exhibit on “power in the palm of your hand,” with instructions on how to link your handprint to an Amazon account.
But even this store didn’t have what I was looking for. Amazon said facial recognition technology was not used and that it collected biometric data only from people who volunteered their palms. I bought some mediocre sushi and some water, but with a code from my Amazon app, since I wasn’t quite ready to give Jeff Bezos my handprint.
Only the human type used here
I headed north toward the New York Times building in Midtown Manhattan, crossing Canal Street to walk SoHo’s distinctive cobblestone streets. I walked into a Ralph Lauren where a blue cotton blazer was $790, a Sunglass Hut that sold Gucci glasses for $550, and a Louis Vuitton with a sleeveless crop top for $990. None of them had a biometric sign, just lots of clerks. They were watching me closely.
At Coach, a clerk standing by high-end handbags said the store didn’t use facial recognition technology, but he and his coworkers knew regular shoplifters by face and crowded the door when they tried to break in.
“Try Sephora,” she suggested. I did, but there was no sign there. Nor in the nearby Apple, Target or Adidas stores.
He Pew Research Center recently polled Americans on their views on facial recognition technology, but only its use by police, which just under half called a good idea. The New York City Police Department has been using the technology since 2011. Less is known about its use by the private sector beyond Madison Square Garden, which began using its system in 2018 to identify security threats.
I walked down Avenue of the Americas toward Chelsea, past Old Navy, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Trader Joe’s, and Best Buy. None of them had a biometric disclosure sign.
He city law that requires the notice went into effect last year. The fine for failing to post a sign is $500, but the law also prohibits businesses from selling or sharing the biometric information they collect, with damages up to $5,000 per violation. Private individuals are responsible for enforcing the law; consumers would have to realize that an unsigned company was secretly scanning their faces or sharing their facial prints with others, and then sue.
“We suspect that many companies are still unaware of New York City’s biometric law,” said Mark Francis, a partner at the Holland & Knight law firm that focuses on data privacy.
‘Stop violence and robbery in supermarkets’
As I crossed 25th Street, my iPhone pedometer reading nearly 14,000 steps, I finally saw a sign for Fairway Market Gourmet Grocery. A flimsy piece of white paper, titled “Biometric Identifier Information Disclosure,” was taped to a sliding glass door.
“They use it for security, if people steal,” a Fairway employee told me. The store, he said, used a provider called FaceFirst; its website promises to “stop violence and theft in supermarkets”. The clerk, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to a reporter, said a man had been thrown out earlier that morning because he had previously stolen coffee.
Retail theft has been on the rise since the pandemic. Karen O’Shea, a spokeswoman for Wakefern, Fairway’s parent company, said the facial recognition system was implemented about a year ago.
“Theft and shoplifting has a high recidivism rate and increases grocery costs for all customers,” he said. “Only associates trained in asset protection use the system, which helps us focus attention on repeat thieves.”
After exiting the Fairway, I came across more signs just eight blocks away. When I walked into Macy’s on 34th Street, there were two sleek white signs posted on the gray marble wall, one in English and one in Spanish, informing customers that their “biometric identification information” was being collected for “information purposes.” asset protection”.
A security guard said he did not know if facial recognition was used there. “What signs? Where?” He said, looking around, apparently confused.
Macy’s did not respond to requests for comment on the signs, but was previously told by a spokesperson Well-informed person that the company used facial recognition “in a small subset of stores with a high incidence of organized retail theft and repeat offenders.”
Aid!
Macy’s was just a block from Madison Square Garden, so I went over to confirm that their signs were still posted on poles near the metal detectors. The last six blocks of my trip, past restaurants and shops on Eighth Avenue, had no obvious biometrics.
The findings of my four-hour hike were mixed. He had checked dozens of stores. Apparently SoHo’s high-end retailers weren’t using cutting-edge technology to protect their expensive clothing, but Fairway Market, with lemons on sale for 99 cents, was. Either we are in the early days of rolling out the technology or it is not proving as popular with retailers as expected.
My journey was a limited study of a large city of many blocks. walking all it would take something like six years. So, dear reader, I ask for help. If you are wandering the streets of New York City and see a sign disclosing biometric identification information, I encourage you to take a photo, record the location, and send it to me at [email protected]. My feet thank you.
