NYC Lawmakers Weigh Ban on Biometric Data Collection in Retail Stores

From WNYC, this is NYC Now, I'm Gene APA.

Some New York City businesses are collecting biometric data without many customers even

knowing about it.

Now, lawmakers are considering restrictions on tools like facial or voice recognition.

We'll get into it all on today's episode.

So first, here's what's happening in our region.

Hundreds of New York City volunteers spread across the five boroughs overnight to help

count the number of unsheltered homeless people.

The yearly homeless outreach population estimate, or hope count, is used to steer federal

funding and resources.

Erin Dalton is the city's new commissioner for the Department of Social Services.

She says the count is also a chance for people to learn about their neighbors sleeping

in parks, subways, or the street.

Too often, all of us, myself included, will walk past somebody who could use help, right?

And so this is an opportunity to really engage with them and show people that we, that

New Yorkers care about New Yorkers.

The whole count tally will be released later this year.

Last year, about 4,500 people were counted sleeping outside.

A brutal winter has New York City drivers constantly dodging potholes.

More than 11,000 potholes complaints have already been reported to 311 so far this year.

That's about a 33% jump compared to the same period last year.

Transportation officials say the damage comes from repeated freeze-thawed cycles.

Water seeps into cracks in the pavement, freezes, and expands, breaking the asphalt apart.

This has the most complaints so far.

The city says it typically feels potholes within about two days of the initial complaint,

and crews patch more than 170,000 of them each year.

That's a lot.

All of these potholes can cause some real damage, even a car crash.

But there are drivers out there who are fake.

Staged car crashes are a big problem in New York, and Governor Kathy Holtle says they're

big business too.

Many data showed there were nearly 44,000 incidents of suspected auto insurance fraud last

year.

That's an 80% increase since 2020.

Under New York's current no-fault auto insurance laws, people are entitled to up to $50,000 worth

of damage after a crash, no matter who's liable.

They can then seek to collect more on top of that.

That's WNYC's Walter Whitman.

He says Governor Holtle is now pushing for changes to those auto insurance laws.

The Governor argues that fraudsters are taking advantage of this system, and those fraudulent

payouts are raising premiums for the rest of us because we're all part of the risk pool.

Walter says the Governor wants to crack down on staged car crashes and reduce rate payer

premiums across the board.

Holtle's proposal would limit payouts to people found to be mostly at fault for a crash.

It would also limit what qualifies as a serious injury, meaning fewer people could try to collect

damages in court.

Walter Holtle has said that she also wants to strengthen criminal penalties against anyone

found to be responsible for organizing a staged accident, not just the driver.

Here she is speaking on the matter earlier this month.

So we're putting the brakes on that fraud enough as enough here in the state of New York.

I was just taking on a big fight.

It's been a problem for a while.

It's getting worse, but nobody else is willing to stand up and say, why is this happening?

And how can we do something about it?

The Governor says these are common sense reforms, and they're long overdue.

But will they work?

Walter says insurance companies and big transportation companies like Uber have been pushing for

changes like these for years.

He says smaller businesses also support these reforms.

However, representatives for trial attorneys say locals proposals will actually end up

hurting innocent crash victims.

New York State trial lawyers association president Andrew Finkelstein says these policy

changes are bit of a trojan horse, limiting the liability and legal exposure of big companies

at the expensive individual drivers.

In fact, all it does is restrict seriously injured people's ability to recover when they've

been in a car crash and have a serious injury.

My colleague Walter says the trial lawyers association is one of the biggest spenders on lobbying

at the Capitol, and they're doing everything they can to stop Holtle's plan.

And then there's an opposing lobbying group supported by Uber that says they're spending

$7 million in favor of the plan.

So this is shaping up to be a really big fight.

These proposals are wrapped up in Governor Holtle's proposed annual budget.

State lawmakers are currently reviewing them, and they're slated to release their own

budgets next month.

Walter says it's expected that these auto insurance changes are likely to be one of the big sticking

points.

They're clearly a major priority for Holtle, but speaker hasty is indicated he has some

concerns about the impact on crash victims.

The compromised budget is due by April 1st, but as you know, Albany often blows past that

deadline.

That's WNYC's Walter Woodman.

Still ahead, people can easily be identified from facial recognition or voice recognition.

But New York City lawmakers are hoping to put some restrictions on businesses collecting

biometric data.

We'll have more on that after the break.

So, where are you?

You're at Radio Lab.

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grass.

Are we on a boat?

No, but we're going to be in Namibia, on Mars, in my closet, a kipsy New York to Kolkata

inside the blue wall, and everywhere.

Radio Lab.

Listen, wherever you get podcasts.

Welcome back to NYC Now, I'm Genepear.

New York City lawmakers are considering new restrictions on how businesses collect biometric

data.

It includes tools like facial recognition or voice recognition that can identify someone

based on their physical traits.

That means things like your face, your voice, or even the way you walk.

Supporters say that raises some serious privacy concerns, especially if customers don't

realize that they're being scanned.

Businesses argue that the technology can help with security and prevent theft.

The debate picked up earlier this year after our reporter, Liam Quigley, discovered that

the grocery chain, Wegmans, have hosted signs in some New York City stores warning shoppers

that their biometric data could be collected, including scans of their faces, eyes, and

their voices.

Now the City Council is weighing whether businesses should be allowed to collect that information

at all.

Liam Quigley is here with me to walk us through the proposed legislation and the reporting

that helped spark this debate.

Hey, Liam.

Hey, how are you?

I'm doing all right.

It's nice to have you here with us.

I want to talk about this legislation.

What exactly are City Council members proposing to do?

New York City already requires businesses to let you know if when you walk in there, they're

going to download an image of your face or some other biometric data.

But now the New York City Council is considering just saying no to all that.

Not even you have to let people know you can't do that anymore.

So that's what we're kind of looking into as far as this Council legislation to catch

up with the businesses that are already doing this.

Yeah.

And I mentioned that you saw signage at Wegmans, but where else are we seeing it?

There's apartment buildings that use biometric data for access.

There's other grocery stores.

There's Madison Square Garden, for example.

That was a big thing.

Yeah, I remember that.

Yeah.

That was big.

And they were using it to kind of exclude people that they had identified as like, well,

we don't like you.

We don't want you in here.

Yeah.

So it's those concerns that have kind of prompted this legislation.

Yeah.

We'll give back to MSG a little later.

But under the rules right now, when New Yorkers walk into a store, what are businesses

actually allowed to do when it comes to collecting this biometric data?

There are not a lot of sell it, but really there's not a ton of guardrails.

There's concerns of it being shared, just like we talked about, you could be added to

a list of people not allowed at a venue and maybe it could be shared with law enforcement.

So those are all sparking concerns among people who are like, you can't consent to it.

It's just you walk in.

The camera grabs you.

Yeah.

It's kind of surprising to me, Liam, that there aren't any regulations in place yet.

I mean, this isn't something that just came up overnight.

We're talking about biometric data, but AI is taking over.

Of course, gate technology has been a thing.

What's been the hold up here?

I think this is a classic case of the regulatory lag behind new technology that's like the

Wegmans expanding this biometric collection, those signs went up only at the beginning

of this year.

And prior to that, they had put up sign saying, this will be for employees only that we're

collecting this data.

So it's expanding kind of rapidly and the city council doesn't necessarily always move

that fast.

After reporting earlier this year, found Wegmans warning customers there, biometric data

could be collected in stores across New York City.

How did you first stumble on that?

Yeah.

I was among the first people to go to Wegmans when they opened.

I was excited.

They had a bar in the grocery store.

I was like, why do they have a bar?

Which location were you at?

This is the Brooklyn location.

Okay.

So by the Navy yard?

Yeah, by the Navy yard.

So I'm in there getting the almonds I like, which are expensive, but they're good.

And as I walk out, I see two employees putting up these signs with like a little icon of

a face and it says, we're collecting your data basically.

So I just, I took a photo of that and just started reporting from there.

Wow.

And when you started digging into it, what do Wegmans say about why it was using this technology

in the stores?

They were saying, look, this is something we do for safety.

And they're pretty open about the fact they said, this is only a select set of stores

that we've identified a higher risk.

Both of those happen to be our New York City locations and one in Manhattan, one in Brooklyn.

They said they don't sell the data.

They only keep it as long as they need to keep it for there's, you know, safety investigations.

And that they can also use it, you know, criminal cases and missing person cases.

So they're saying, this is about safety and we're going to be responsible with your data.

You mentioned there were safety concerns.

Any particular threats?

Wegmans didn't get into specifics about what's going on at their locations that warranted

their use of this technology.

But certainly there's been a lot of conversations over the past, you know, since the pandemic

about retail theft and repeat offenders committing those offenses.

And that's something people who are proponents of this technology will often refer to saying,

you know, that you can identify these people as soon as they walk in the store with this

technology.

This is a really big story when you put it out earlier this year and you got a lot of responses.

Can you talk about what folks were really concerned about?

I think part of this is the Wegmans factor that Wegmans just has this like this aura of,

and it has this, this dedicated following.

So when Wegmans is in the news, there's a lot of people who are just interested in what's going on with Wegmans.

But I think it is part of a growing like with all the stuff going on with AI and

ice enforcement and the way technology is being used in warfare, it's on people's minds.

And I was definitely, you know, I was, I was a little taken aback that knowing that I had

just left the store where presumably now my data is on a server somewhere because the signs

were being put up as I walked out.

So yeah, it gets on a lot of people's minds.

Yeah, and you're just the guy, you know, shopping for almonds.

They identified me as almond guy or maybe something else.

Now, as I mentioned, Liam, this isn't the first time biometric technology has raised alarms in New York.

As you mentioned, back in 2023, medicine squared, garden used facial recognition to ban certain lawyers

from entering the arena, I guess they weren't friends.

In 2024, the MTA was barred from using biometric technology to enforce fairy vision.

Then just last year, council member Jennifer Gutierrez introduced legislation aimed at regulating

gate recognition, which I mentioned earlier.

And that technology could identify people by the way they walk, which is also kind of creepy.

What do those examples tell us about how this technology, you know, is spreading faster than

the laws meant to regulate it?

Yeah, there's definitely that regulatory lag that you're seeing here where you look,

those lawyers at MSG were probably surprised the first time they got bounced after some system flagged them.

And Wegman's already has the data, if presumably if you walked in there,

when the system was turned on, though they promised they will get rid of it.

If they don't need it for something for their security safety purposes, but it's here.

I've gotten people emailing me photos from other chains in the city saying there's a camera

and this checkout counter that this store is doing this, this store is doing that.

So it's kind of like a lot of our data is already uploaded into this stuff before the legislation

arrives to set these more parameters about it.

So late, so behind.

We talked about the response that your story got from customers and people in general.

But what are privacy advocates and lawmakers most worried, you know,

could happen once companies start collecting and storing biometric data?

Shahana Haneef, who's the council member who's really,

this is her legislation to ban it from businesses in the city.

She says, you can't, there's no backsees on your face, like a credit card.

Yeah, change the number on a credit card if it gets stolen.

But what if your biometric data is compromised?

What if it gets sold down the road to another company or shared with law enforcement?

More broadly outside of New York City, if you look at ICE enforcement right now,

there's a lot of concerns about how the ICE agents are using facial recognition software.

Yeah, it's kind of got me so concerned.

Like I don't want my face, you know, to be out there for anyone to match or I don't know

if you remember this movie with John Travolta and Nicholas Cage face off, right?

Like that's the things I think about.

I know it's crazy.

But like, that's what I think about.

If this bill moves forward, how could it change the experience for New Yorkers the next

time they walk into a Wegmans or any store?

I mean, physically your experience is going to be the same.

Anyone can still record you with a CCTV and store that video footage of you indefinitely.

But it would mean that they can't store your biometric data anymore.

They can't collect or store it and use that to make security decisions

or maybe decisions about how you shop and maybe how to influence that in the future.

But going back to what you said, I think there is an element of like, maybe it's too late.

Maybe we just have to embrace the fact that a lot of our information is going to be stored

somewhere.

Has Mayor Mombani or a council speaker, Julie Menon, spoken out about this?

Julie Menon is a sponsor of Shahana News Bill.

Okay.

Mayor Mombani had been involved with this stuff when it came back to those MTA,

you know, wanting to enforce fair evasion.

He came out when he was in the assembly saying basically stopping that.

So the indication is that he's more like, let's pump the brakes on this.

Though he hasn't been on the record about this stuff very recently as mayor.

I think privacy advocates are optimistic and actually calling on Mombani to like,

hey, you have a chance to really put some guardrails on this stuff.

And how soon can we see movement on this bill?

It's going to be months, the city council, even when it moves quickly.

This is a legislative process that has a lot of moving parts.

And then if it does pass going in fact to be 180 days before enforcement can begin under

what mechanism exactly would remain to be seen.

Yeah.

Well, we'll see.

We'll see.

That's WNYC's Liam Quigley.

Thanks a lot, Liam.

Thank you.

I promise to only use your voice for this podcast.

It's in my contract, I think.

Thank you.

And thank you for listening to NYC now.

I'm Janay Pierre.

See you next time.

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