Shopping For Privacy: How Technology in Brick-and-Mortar Retail Stores Poses Privacy Risks for Shoppers
Vincent Nguyen*
Article

The full text of this Article may be found here.

29 Fordham Intell. Prop. Media &Ent. L.J. 535 (2019).

Article by Vincent Nguyen

ABSTRACT

[A]

s technology continues to rapidly advance, the American legal system has failed to protect individual shoppers from the technology implemented into retail stores, which poses significant privacy risks but does not violate the law. In particular, I examine the technologies implemented into many brick-and-mortar stores today, many of which the average everyday shopper has no idea exists. This Article criticizes these technologies, suggesting that many, if not all of them, are questionable in their legality taking advantage of their status in a legal gray zone. Because the American judicial system cannot adequately protect the individual shopper from these questionable privacy practices, I call upon the Federal Trade Commission, the de facto privacy regulator in the United States, to increase its policing of physical retail stores to protect the shopper from any further harm.

*Dean’s Fellow for the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham Law School. I would like to thank my family and friends who have begrudgingly accepted my justification of shopping for the sake of academic research. Special thanks to Professors Susan Scafidi, Founder and Director of the Fashion Law Institute, Ari Ezra Waldman, Professor of Law and Director for the Innovation Center for Law and Technology at New York Law School; and Elizabeth Cooper, Professor at Fordham Law School and Director for the Feerick Center for Social Justice.