Law note · New York
New York City Biometric Identifier Information Law
What it asks of an app
- If you are a commercial establishment in New York City collecting, retaining, converting, storing, or sharing biometric identifier information, including from scraped or captured photos processed into a face-geometry scan, post clear and conspicuous signage disclosing that practice.
- Never sell, lease, trade, or otherwise profit from biometric identifier information collected from a New York City commercial establishment's customers; this ban carries no notice-and-cure period before a lawsuit.
- An aggrieved person can sue you directly under this ordinance's private right of action; a signage violation gives you 30 days to cure before suit, but a sale or profit violation does not.
When LexLint raises it
crawls_webprocesses_biometricsprocesses_voice
What we found
The ordinance applies only to a commercial establishment, a place of entertainment, retail store, or food and drink establishment. Section 22-1202(a) requires clear, conspicuous signage disclosing the collection, retention, conversion, storage, or sharing of biometric identifier information, defined to include a retina or iris scan, fingerprint, voiceprint, or hand or face geometry scan, or other identifying characteristic.
Section 22-1202(b) flatly bans selling, leasing, trading, sharing in exchange for anything of value, or otherwise profiting from biometric identifier information.
Section 22-1203 creates a private right of action: an aggrieved person may sue, with a 30-day notice-and-cure period required before suing over a signage violation but no notice-and-cure required for a sale or profit violation under section 22-1202(b), and a prevailing party may recover statutory damages, attorneys' fees and costs, and injunctive relief.
This is a genuine finding worth flagging directly: it is a municipal law, narrower in scope than a statewide biometric statute because it is limited to commercial establishments' customer-facing collection and does not apply outside New York City, but its private right of action is confirmed directly from the code text. Section 22-1204 exempts government agencies entirely, and exempts financial institutions and non-analyzed photo or video capture from the disclosure duty specifically.
The corresponding corpus candidate for this ordinance arrived with an empty url field; the correct official citation is the New York City Administrative Code as published by the American Legal Publishing code library, used here.