US Landlords Prohibited from Using Biometric Locks and Codes

The new bill will prohibit lessors from using biometric data to harass tenants, and will limit the amount of personal data collected. This publication writes Curbed.

“Against the backdrop of growing concerns about confidentiality on the part of tenants and civil liberties experts, the new bill of the city council aims to limit the data collected using keyless technologies, which landlords are increasingly resorting to instead of traditional keys," the publication said.

It is noted that over the past few years, landlords have more often replaced conventional keys with the latest technologies - the so-called intelligent access systems. These are applications for smartphones, and personalized key chains, as well as biometric identifiers (eye scans, fingerprints and face recognition technology).

This led to the question: what kind of data about tenants these tools can collect, and who can have access to them.

As a result, city council member Mark Levin introduced a bill that would prevent landlords from using the personal data collected by these systems to evict or prosecute residents or to control their apartments.

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“We must have strict rules to protect tenants from the misuse of this data by their lessors,” Levin said.

It is noted that this bill, among other things, prohibits: using the personal data of residents for eviction or prosecution; limits the amount of data collected by name, apartment number and contact information; prohibits the sale of data to third parties; prohibits the collection of information on minor residents; requires data not to be stored for more than 90 days.

This is not the first time that officials are trying to protect tenants from using the collected biometric data, the source said.

Earlier this month, City Council member Brad Lander introduced a bill that prohibits lessors from requiring tenants to use biometric scanning and other technologies to enter their homes.

And in the summer, another bill introduced by Congressman Yvette Clark implied a ban on the use of biometric and facial recognition technologies in state-funded housing funds funded from the federal budget. This happened after tenants in her Brooklyn district opposed the use of one of these systems in their residential complex, the source said.