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A visitor has filed a $5-million lawsuit against Disneyland for allegedly failing to properly disclose the use of facial-recognition technology at park and collecting sensitive data on guests.

Summer Christine Duffield of Riverside County filed the lawsuit after a May 10 visit to Disneyland and sister park California Adventure, alleging that the resort violates privacy and consumer protection laws collecting biometric data of visitors, without adequate consent.

“Disney does not adequately disclose the use of their biometric collection, so consumers — which almost always include children — have no idea that Disney is collecting this highly sensitive data,” the plaintiff noted in the lawsuit. “Guests should be able to expressly opt in to this type of sensitive facial recognition technology with written consent — the onus of privacy rights should not be on the victim.”

The suit was filed on May 15 in U.S. District Court in New York. The lawsuit cites an article from The Times on consumer reaction to Disney’s use of facial recognition.

The Walt Disney Company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“People are getting fed up with being force-fed new tech, new AI, new tracking tools,” said Ari Waldman, Professor of Law at the UC Irvine.

Walt Disney Co. rolled out its facial recognition technology in late April across Disneyland Resort to verify tickets. The way it works is guests’ faces are scanned, converted into a numerical identifier and matched with ticket data.

Disney’s privacy policy notes that the identifiers created for identification are deleted within 30 days unless they need to be kept for legal or fraud prevention purposes.

Guests who don’t want to use the technology can enter through a separate entrance marked with a silhouette of a head and shoulders with a slash through it. However, of the dozens of lines to enter Disneyland and California Adventure, there were only four that didn’t use facial recognition, during an April visit.

The sign saying “Use of this technology is optional,” adorn the security checkpoint entrances.

“This technology facilitates ease of reentry into our parks and helps prevent fraud,” the company noted in its website.

Use of facial recognition technology for crowd management and ticketing has become increasingly commonplace.

Dodger Stadium deploys facial recognition for guests using the “Go Ahead Entry” at certain gates without producing a physical or digital ticket to enter the stadium. At Intuit Dome in Inglewood, visitors can use “GameFaceID” to quickly move through a separate lane with their face as their ID.

The lawsuit comes at a time when there is increasing concern of surveillance in public places, and privacy advocates have rallied against the normalization of surveillance. More recently, concerns of the potentially abusive use of artificial intelligence by government to analyze large quantities of data — from texts to facial scans — to surveil U.S citizens resulted in a high-profile showdown between the Pentagon and Anthropic.

England captain Ben Stokes was struck on the face by a cricket ball, which required surgery for a broken cheekbone.

England Test captain Ben Stokes has said he feels “quite lucky” to be alive as he recovers from surgery after being hit in the face by a cricket ball.

All-rounder Stokes required the procedure after suffering a broken cheekbone sustained by being hit by the ball during a net session while he was coaching academy players at his domestic county side Durham in February.

Stokes is set to play in two first-class County Championship games next month, but he revealed the incident could have been so much worse.

“I copped one straight in the face,” the 34-year-old told the England and Wales Cricket Board.

“Pretty nasty but, funnily, probably the best result of a bad situation, to be honest. Just a couple of inches one way or the other, I might not be here doing this interview, if I didn’t turn my head round.

“All things considered, although I had pretty major facial surgery to sort it out – it was a bit of a mess under here (cheekbone), I’ve got out quite lucky. So pretty thankful for that.”

He added: “Obviously it set everything back about a month, five weeks, with getting back to where I wanted to be to play at the start of the season for Durham, but just had to sort of quickly go back to the drawing board and put a plan together to get me ready to play a couple of games for Durham before the Test summer starts.

“At the back end of all that now, but it was a pretty scary situation. Thankfully still here and everything’s all right.”

Stokes is expected to be fit to lead England in the first Test of their home season against New Zealand at Lord’s starting on June 4, as they look to recover from their woeful 4-1 Ashes humiliation in Australia.

Stokes downplays rift with England coach McCullum

Stokes, meanwhile, has played down reports of disagreements with head ⁠coach Brendon McCullum but added that they do have different viewpoints at times.

British media reported that former New Zealand captain McCullum’s relationship with Test ⁠captain Stokes frayed during the Ashes series defeat in Australia, though the duo have publicly backed each other.

“I am very confident in mine and Brendon’s ability to be able to work together, because we’ve done it for ‌such a long period of time now,” Stokes said in an interview with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).

“But we work together in a slightly different way. The main point of me and Brendon is our alignment towards winning things and making this team as good as they can be.”

Since taking charge in 2022, McCullum and Stokes implemented ⁠an ultra-aggressive style of play known as “Bazball”, which has ⁠come under much scrutiny since England’s Ashes defeat, prompting the ECB to launch a thorough review into the team’s preparations.

McCullum was retained as coach.

“Agreeing on every single thing, that’s ⁠just impossible,” Stokes said.

“We agree 95% of the time on things, but those 5% things that we might ⁠have different views on, we talk about it ⁠between each other and then we end up getting to the place where we want to get to.

“We put a lot of our heart and soul into this job. Brendon certainly ‌has for the four years he’s done it so far, and hopefully we’ll still be together at the end of 2027, winning what we want ‌to ‌win.”

England host New Zealand for a three-Test series in June before eight limited-overs matches at home to India.