Three U.S. senators, including Democrat Amy Klobuchar who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel, wrote a letter to Amazon.com Inc to express concern about its expansion and promotion of a palm print recognition system, Klobuchar's office said Friday morning.
Amazon began rolling out biometric technology at its Whole Foods stores in April in Seattle, letting customers pay by scanning their palms for items. The system, called Amazon One, lets customers associate credit cards with their palm prints.
Jon Ossoff, who was joined by Senators Bill Cassidy, a Republican, and Klobuchar, a Democrat expressed in the letter dated Thursday concern about privacy issues and competitive ones related to the program called Amazon One.
Our concerns about user privacy are heightened by evidence that Amazon shared voice data with third-party contractors and allegations that Amazon has violated biometric privacy laws, wrote lawmakers in the letter.
They also wrote that Amazon may use data from Amazon One, including the information of third-party customers who could purchase and use Amazon One devices, to further cement its competitive power and suppress competition across various markets.
The lawmakers asked Amazon to tell them about plans to acquire Amazon One and how they had sold or licensed the technology. They also asked how many people signed up for it, how the data is used and if it is ever considered digitally related with facial recognition systems.