Most event registration forms have some version of the same line: By attending, you consent to photography and videography at this event.
For years, that language has been a convenient catch-all for event photographers and videographers. But technology has moved well beyond someone walking around a ballroom with a camera.
Facial recognition can turn an attendee’s image into a biometric template. AI-enabled wearables can capture conversations and generate notes. Sensors can passively monitor activity in an event space. And increasingly, the technology doing the collecting may be difficult for an attendee to see at all.
That is creating a consent problem that event organizers can no longer solve with a checkbox buried in registration terms.
“Burying passive monitoring disclosures inside a lengthy registration privacy policy falls far short of meaningful consent,” said Nick Borelli, director of marketing at Zenus. “Genuine consent requires highly visible physical signage at venue entry points alongside clear opt-out routes and designated non-monitored zones for attendees who decline participation.”
Borelli’s point extends beyond facial recognition. The more event technology moves into the background, the harder it becomes for attendees to know when they are being recorded, analyzed or otherwise monitored — and what they can do about it.
“Event participants wearing recording technology requires more of an open discussion with your community to understand the implications and potential stipulations,” he said.
Recording Technology Becoming Obscure
That becomes particularly complicated as recording technology moves from obvious cameras into devices that look like ordinary eyewear or other everyday accessories. Borelli argues that planners need to think about privacy not as something attendees automatically have, but as something organizers must deliberately design into an event.
“Planners must adopt a zero-trust mindset where ambient recording and AI analysis are assumed to be the default environment in any event space,” he said.
For facial recognition, that problem starts with a distinction many registration forms fail to make.
“A registration checkbox covering ‘photography and videography at the event’ is consent to being photographed,” said Asaf Shuster, founder and CEO of event technology company Kampfire, whose platform uses facial-recognition technology. “It is not consent to having the geometry of your face measured and converted into a template.”
That distinction between a photo and a biometric template is where Shuster said most organizers’ consent practices break down. A photo is an image. A biometric template is a mathematical representation of someone’s face, generated by the software, that can be stored, matched against other images and, depending on the vendor, shared with other systems entirely.
Monique Rochard-Marine, head of global commercial services at medical technology company Cordis, said the gap is a visibility problem as much as a legal one.
“Most attendees aren’t reading pages of registration terms, and a sign at the entrance doesn’t solve passive collection happening throughout an event,” she said. “I think we’re going to have to make privacy expectations much more visible and specific, especially around recording and AI-enabled devices.”
The Questions Planners Should Be Asking Vendors
Shuster and Rochard-Marine both pointed to the same fix: treat biometric technology as a distinct procurement decision, with its own questions, rather than folding it into the general photography-and-recording consent that already exists in the registration flow.
The questions Rochard-Marine said belong in that conversation: Is an image retained after check-in, or discarded immediately? Is a biometric template created, and if so, where is it stored? Who inside the vendor’s organization has access to it? Does the vendor use subprocessors that touch the data, and are those other companies disclosed? How long is the data kept, and what happens to it after the event ends?
Most planners can answer those questions about their registration database or their event app. Fewer can answer them about the facial-recognition system running their check-in line, because the vendor conversation historically stopped at “does this speed up entry” rather than continuing into what the software does with what it captures.
Rochard-Marine said she applies a simpler test before approving any data-capturing technology for an event.
“It comes down to whether the technology genuinely improves the attendee experience and whether we can clearly explain what we’re collecting and why,” she said. “If I wouldn’t be comfortable explaining it directly to an attendee, I probably shouldn’t be collecting it.”
That test cuts against treating biometric consent as a compliance checkbox to clear during procurement. It asks the planner to be able to say, in plain language, to any attendee who asks: here is what this captured, here is where it goes, and here is how long we keep it. A general “photography and videography” line can’t answer that question.
Not Easy to Detect
And the challenge is likely to get harder as recording technology becomes more ubiquitous.
“Attendees have been able to record every aspect of your event for years now and wearables and AI are only making the process easier and more powerful for the user,” Borelli said. “Wearables and passive recording for note-taking and AI-power assistance might very well end up being the norm for all of us soon.”
For planners, that means privacy policies may have to evolve from disclosure documents into part of the physical design and operation of an event — with clear communication, defined boundaries and meaningful choices for attendees who don’t want to participate.
“Only through ongoing discussions with your community can you make informed decisions regarding how you serve them and how you protect them as well,” Borelli said.
