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The Walt Disney Company is facing a class-action lawsuit over its use of facial recognition technology at its Disneyland theme park entrances.
The lawsuit accuses the company of violating visitors’ privacy rights and consumer protection laws.
“Disney does not adequately disclose the use of their biometric collection, so consumers — which almost always include children — have no idea that Disney is collecting this highly sensitive data,” according to the filing.
New York-based attorney Blake Hunter Yagman filed the suit on behalf of lead plaintiff Summer Christine Duffield, a California parent who visited Disneyland and Disney California Adventure Park last week with her children.
CBC News has reached out to Disneyland but has not yet received a response. A Disneyland Resort spokesperson was quoted in The Hill as saying, “We respect and protect our guests’ personal information and dispute the plaintiff’s claims, which we believe are without merit.”
Disneyland debuted facial recognition at entrances for Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure Park in April, moves that “facilitate ease of reentry into our parks and helps prevent fraud,” the company said online.
Images of visitors snapped at the facial recognition entrance lanes are then matched with those captured when tickets or passes are first used, with the pics converted into “unique numerical values,” Disney explained.
The data is deleted data within 30 days of creation, it said, “except in cases where data must be maintained for legal or fraud-prevention purposes.”
The company also specified that “participation is optional,” though noted that visitors may still have their image captured at entrance lanes without facial recognition. In those cases, staff manually validate tickets.
Signage ‘easy to miss,’ ‘unclear’
While new signage notifies guests about the new technology and there are separate entrance lanes set up for those wishing to bypass facial recognition, the signage is “very easy to miss,” and the separate entrances much fewer and “unclear,” the lawsuit alleges, referencing a Los Angeles Times article.
“There are unclear separate entrances which have a slash through a silhouette of a head and shoulders as if that constitutes a meaningful way to opt out from facial recognition collection,” reads the filing.
The suit notes that biometric info can be easily linked to a person’s identity and records — like credit cards or government-issued ID — to create a valuable data package that, if breached, could potentially be used for fraud.
“Guests should be able to expressly opt in to this type of sensitive facial recognition technology with written consent — the onus of privacy rights should not be on the victim,” Yagman wrote in the filing.
The class-action suit is seeking at least $5 million US.
