Disney faces $5-million lawsuit over use of facial recognition technology.
A visitor has filed a $5 million lawsuit against Disneyland, alleging it failed to properly disclose the park’s use of facial recognition technology and collect sensitive data on guests.
Summer Christine Duffield of Riverside County filed a lawsuit following her May 10 visit to Disneyland and sister park California Adventure, claiming the resort violated privacy and consumer protection laws by collecting visitors’ biometric data without adequate consent.
“Disney fails to adequately disclose its use of its biometric collection, so consumers, who almost always include children, have no idea that Disney is collecting this highly sensitive data,” the plaintiff said in her lawsuit. “Guests should be able to explicitly opt-in to such sensitive facial recognition technology with written consent; the responsibility for privacy rights should not rest with the victim.”
The lawsuit was filed May 15 in U.S. District Court in New York. The lawsuit cites an article in The Times on consumer reaction to Disney’s use of facial recognition.
The Walt Disney Company did not respond to a request for comment.
“People are tired of being fed new technology, new artificial intelligence, new tracking tools,” said UC Irvine Law Professor Ari Waldman.
Walt Disney Co. rolled out facial recognition technology at Disneyland Resort in late April to verify tickets. The way the system works is by scanning guests’ faces, converting them into a numerical identifier and matching them with ticket data.
Disney’s privacy policy It states that identifiers created for identification are deleted within 30 days unless they are required to be retained for legal or fraud prevention purposes.
Guests who do not wish to use technology can enter through a separate entrance marked with a dashed head and shoulders silhouette. However, of the dozens of lines to Disneyland and California Adventure, there were only four that did not use facial recognition during the April visit.
A sign “Use of this technology is optional” adorns the security checkpoint entrances.
“This technology makes it easier to re-enter our parks and helps prevent fraud,” the company said in its statement. website.
The use of facial recognition technology for crowd management and ticketing is becoming increasingly common.
Dodger Stadium uses facial recognition for guests who use “Attendance Entry” at select gates without producing a physical or digital ticket to enter the stadium. At the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, visitors can use:GameFaceID” to quickly move down a separate lane using their face as their identity.
The case comes at a time of growing concern. surveillance in public placesand privacy advocates have risen up against the normalization of surveillance. More recently, concerns about the potential misuse of artificial intelligence by the government to analyze large amounts of data (from texts to facial scans) to spy on US citizens led to a high-profile showdown between the Pentagon and Anthropic.
