{"id":224726,"date":"2026-03-17T15:53:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T19:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/17\/amazon-ordered-to-share-limited-source-code-in-biometric-data-privacy-dispute\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T16:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T20:30:10","slug":"amazon-ordered-to-share-limited-source-code-in-biometric-data-privacy-dispute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/17\/amazon-ordered-to-share-limited-source-code-in-biometric-data-privacy-dispute\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon ordered to share \u2018limited source code\u2019 in biometric data privacy dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amazon ordered to share \u2018limited source code\u2019 in biometric data privacy dispute<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.biometricupdate.com\/202603\/amazon-ordered-to-share-limited-source-code-in-biometric-data-privacy-dispute<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-17 15:53:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.biometricupdate.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Amazon\u2019s legal representation in a lawsuit filed under Illinois\u2019 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\u2019s source code to make their case that they do. A U.S. District Court disagrees.<\/p>\n

The District Court for the Northern District of Illinois rejected Amazon\u2019s attempt to block plaintiffs from examining the source code of its Just Walk Out technology. Just Walk Out technology is distinct from Amazon\u2019s \u201cOne\u201d palm biometric payment system, which the company discontinued for retail settings earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in September of 2023, alleging the usual lack of informed consent before the retail giant collected their biometrics.<\/p>\n

Amazon\u2019s position is that the system does not collect biometric identifiers, as defined by BIPA, because one of its engineers says so.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefendants submit the declaration of one of these knowledgeable Amazon engineers, Tian Lan, as evidence that JWO Technology \u2018is designed to track product interactions within a store using the location of hand as an anchor\u2019 and not to \u2018identify individuals using hand geometry or biometric identifiers as defined by BIPA,\u2019\u201d the decision says (via Law.com).<\/p>\n

But the interactions are clearly between a product and a specific individual, otherwise people checking out would be charged for each others\u2019 selections. An Amazon representative told Biometric Update in a 2023 email that Just Walk Out \u201cuses 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 \u2018who took what.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The key distinction, for Amazon, is a semantic one: \u201cDefendants summarily assert that the critical aspects of the JWO Technology\u2019s use of that…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amazon ordered to share \u2018limited source code\u2019 in biometric data privacy dispute https:\/\/www.biometricupdate.com\/202603\/amazon-ordered-to-share-limited-source-code-in-biometric-data-privacy-dispute Publish Date:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":224727,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/d1sr9z1pdl3mb7.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/13113547\/Amazon-Just-Walk-Out-scaled.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224726"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224726"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224728,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224726\/revisions\/224728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}