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After a New York apartment owner installed a smart lock on the lobby door of the building, a group of tenants sued, arguing that they needed something else, a physical key .
According to one report, a group of five tenants from a Hell's Kitchen apartment filed a lawsuit at a time when smart Latch locks were installed in some 1,000 residential buildings in New York. In this case, residents argued that the smart lock could create privacy issues, stating that an owner could use a smart lock to "monitor" and "follow" tenants. In addition, a resident of the 93-year-old building complained after the installation of the lock that he was unable to operate it and began to feel like a virtual locker.
The case has been settled privately, so there is no court decision that can set a precedent. However, as the statistics above indicate, it is unlikely to be the latest such phenomenon, as advances in the smart home sector exceed the general acceptance of the technology. .
In this case, the landlord's lawyer would have attempted to eliminate the tenants' claims of confidentiality and ease of operation, pointing out that all you needed was a code to lock the lock if you did not want to use the associated application. Latch, the manufacturer of the lock, also said that the mobile application that runs in parallel with the lock did not collect market data for Facebook users, for example.
Nevertheless, residents of the apartment complex felt some victory at the end of their lawsuit. Mary Beth McKenzie, a 72-year-old artist who lived in the building for nearly 50 years, told the New York Post it was all ridiculous and should not have happened in the first place. "It's ridiculous that everyone is spending all this money to go to court just to get a key," she told the tabloid in March. "I have a key for 45 years. And now we can not get keys. "
Other residents have not only expressed concern that an 84-page contract accompanying the lock application states that "any information collected through the Latch system is transmitted to the owner of the building", according to The report. Posts Account. McKenzie's 93-year-old husband does not use a smartphone either, so she was forced to use the stairwell because the smart lock controls access to the elevator. Going up several stairs is almost impossible for him, that 's why he said that the installation of the lock gave him the impression of being locked in the l'. inside his apartment.
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