The Indianapolis Colts, mobile developer YinzCam and audio technology company LISNR were named in a class action lawsuit filed Oct. 14 in Pennsylvania alleging that features of the team’s official app allowed them to listen in to private conversations without consent.
Plaintiff Alan Rackemann, a citizen of Indiana pursuing punitive and statutory damages, lists San Francisco-based law firm Edelson PC as a member of his legal counsel in the case. The Golden State Warriors’ official team app was the focus of a similar lawsuit filed in August that saw Edelson PC also represent the plaintiff in that case, LaTisha Satchell.
“It’s a lot of things that are fishy,” LISNR CEO and founder Rodney Williams said in response to the allegations. “It’s a little bit of lawyers being opportunistic, and it’s a lot of false allegations and just bad information.”
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Rackemann’s suit alleges that LISNR “utilizes a novel beacon technology called audio beacons,” and that for it to work, the defendants “surreptitiously” turn on smartphone microphones and unlawfully listen in. Powered by low-energy Bluetooth, beacon technology pinpoints user locations and uses the information received to push ad-related content. Williams passionately refuted LISNR’s association with beacon technology.
“We don’t have a beacon technology,” Williams said. “LISNR is not a beacon. We don’t make beacons.”
Earlier this month, Williams had spoken out in wake of the lawsuit related to the Warriors app on the growing issue of mobile privacy in a technology-centric world. Williams suggested transparency within tech companies as a strong tactic to gain the trust of consumers.
LISNR has created a technology that functions similar to that of the earliest of television remotes. The “clicker,” as Americans affectionately recall it, communicated with its TV counterpart through radio frequencies inaudible to the human ear. Audio was never recorded. In the same fashion LISNR technology wakes up only when a recognizable frequency is sent over the air, according to the company, and the majority of the time, “it’s not recording, it’s not listening, it’s not even active,” Williams said.
The gray area LISNR and future companies will have to address moving forward is how an interface can recognize a frequency without actively listening. Does recognizing constitute hearing, and if so, does hearing constitute listening?
“We know that we’re doing something right for the industry and the market and mobile,” Williams said while defending LISNR. “We understand that there’s challenges and we’ll work through them, but we definitely don’t want to be exploited.”
LISNR is considering a countersuit against Rackemann if the opportunity presents itself. “This is not something we’re just going to take lightly,” Williams said.
The Colts have not yet commented publicly on the lawsuit where some facts are being disputed.
Rackemann and his counsel claim the Colts partnered with LISNR in 2014, “in furtherance of the Colts’ desire to remain a technological leader among NFL organizations,” according to the lawsuit. Williams claims LISNR partnered with the Colts only as recently as August.
YinzCam founder and CEO Priya Narasimhan told the New York Post she expected the claims against her company to be dropped because the app YinzCam developed did not include the features in question and that it was the Colts app’s new developer that added those features.
The entire lawsuit against the Indianapolis Colts, LISNR, YinzCam can be found here.