Amazon ordered to share ‘limited source code’ in biometric data privacy dispute
Amazon ordered to share ‘limited source code’ in biometric data privacy dispute
Publish Date: 2026-03-17 15:53:00
Source Domain: www.biometricupdate.com
Amazon’s legal representation in a lawsuit filed under Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act has taken the awkward position that its Just Walk Out software which analyzes hand geometry does not collect biometrics, and that plaintiffs should not be allowed to examine the technology’s source code to make their case that they do. A U.S. District Court disagrees.
The District Court for the Northern District of Illinois rejected Amazon’s attempt to block plaintiffs from examining the source code of its Just Walk Out technology. Just Walk Out technology is distinct from Amazon’s “One” palm biometric payment system, which the company discontinued for retail settings earlier this year.
Plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in September of 2023, alleging the usual lack of informed consent before the retail giant collected their biometrics.
Amazon’s position is that the system does not collect biometric identifiers, as defined by BIPA, because one of its engineers says so.
“Defendants submit the declaration of one of these knowledgeable Amazon engineers, Tian Lan, as evidence that JWO Technology ‘is designed to track product interactions within a store using the location of hand as an anchor’ and not to ‘identify individuals using hand geometry or biometric identifiers as defined by BIPA,’” the decision says (via Law.com).
But the interactions are clearly between a product and a specific individual, otherwise people checking out would be charged for each others’ selections. An Amazon representative told Biometric Update in a 2023 email that Just Walk Out “uses a combination of sophisticated AI technologies like computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning to distinguish shoppers from one another, link a customer to their method of payment, and determine ‘who took what.’”
The key distinction, for Amazon, is a semantic one: “Defendants summarily assert that the critical aspects of the JWO Technology’s use of that…
