Amazon's Palm Scan At Red Rocks Amphitheater Gets Rejection From Artists, Here's Why!

The use of palm scans at the Red Rocks Amphitheater, publicly rejected. (photo credit: pixabay)

JAKARTA – Amazon recently signed a deal to install palm scanning technology at the Red Rocks Amphitheater. However, the move has drawn backlash from artists, rights activists and fans over privacy concerns.

Amazon One's contactless payment technology was launched more than a year ago and relies on palm scanning to allow users to authenticate payments after purchasing items from Amazon Go outlets.

The argument put against the security giants of e-commerce is that "you can't determine someone's identity by looking at the image of their palm."

Plus, the company ensures that fingerprints are not stored on the device, and are encrypted before being stored in the cloud. To increase adoption, Amazon is offering $10 as an incentive to users who sign up for the palm scanning service.

However, privacy concerns surrounding the handling of biometric data are perfectly legitimate. For a company with a not-so-good record, this Amazon technology will never be accepted with open arms.

Amazon's latest challenge comes from a group of artists, privacy advocates, and fans protesting against the installation of the Amazon One palm scanner outside Colorado's famed Red Rocks Amphitheater.

It has a rich history spanning more than seven decades of hosting influential artists and groups such as The Beatles, Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix, John Denver, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Stevie Wonder.

Amazon signed a deal with event ticketing company AEG in September this year to install an Amazon One palm-scanning kiosk outside the venue. The goal is to make the ticket verification process easier and faster.

However, highlighting the security concerns surrounding the risks of biometric surveillance, some 200 artists and 30 rights groups have now written an open letter to remove the palm scanning technology.

The letter likened the move to a "slap in the face to fans and artists who have gone to great lengths to promote safety for everyone at live events." Interestingly, AEG is backing away from plans to use facial recognition technology at concerts and festivals in 2019.

Now the letter asks the company to take another stand and ditch the palm-based ticketing system outside the Red Rocks Amphitheater as well as for every other place where such a move has been planned.

It goes without saying that such technology has been flagged time and time again, and the pressure from rights activists has been increasing in recent times. Earlier this month, Facebook announced that it was revoking its facial recognition technology after it recorded more than a billion faces online.

Amazon is also not showing off a clean record. The company was criticized for allowing law enforcement authorities suspected of abusing machine learning-based Recognition technology to perform facial analysis and identification.

Following the protests, Amazon announced that it would limit police use of facial recognition products. As for its latest challenge, the open letter asks AEG to cancel its contract with Amazon and also ensure that no privacy-invading biometric systems are installed at any of its event venues around the world.

The main concern flagged here is that the collection of biometric data will make concert goers vulnerable to exploitative institutional tracking and abuse by hackers.