DC, Silicon Valley Partners Weigh in on Amazon "Selfie Pay" and Driverless Car Laws

First, a patent application filed by Amazon revealed the company’s proposed “selfie pay” concept when it was made public earlier this month. The feature would allow customers to complete transactions by taking live photos of themselves.

According to the application, Amazon would ask a shopper to perform a particular action in the photo and then use facial recognition technology and biometric data to confirm the shopper’s identity. While the idea has been praised for potentially offering more security than current authentication methods, Law360 reports that the use of such data presents new security risks and potential liabilities for Amazon and that the retail giant would have to comply with a different set of regulations than it does for traditional ecommerce.

“The question of whether or not Amazon will be storing biometric data … is important. When you get into anything biometric-related, there are a whole host of laws that come into play that don’t come into play for financial services in general,” Public Policy and Global Security partner Mercedes Tunstall tells Law360. “Creating a full biometric profile gets into that realm where companies have to get a lot of disclosures in front of individuals and ensure that they have all types of system controls in place.”

Additionally, this week at Congress, companies such as Google and Lyft urged lawmakers to form a federal regulatory framework for driverless car technology instead of depending on states to create individual laws. The inherent mobility of the technology would suggest a need for a nationwide set of rules, and Corporate & Securities partner Armando Castro says the industry certainly anticipates a need for standardized regulations.

“There’s movement to the extent that there are tech companies and large car manufacturers that have asked Congress to address this,” he said.

But The Recorder reports that the federal government doesn’t appear to be approaching any definitive action and that lawmakers in California are addressing a need for privacy regulations for data already being collected by car manufacturers—an issue that is sure to intersect with driverless cars when they hit the road.

“I would expect to see more regulations from the state of California as the technology advances,” Castro said.

Read Law360's article about Amazon's selfie pay here (subscription required).