Clear brings biometric identity checks to Mount Sinai hospitals amid privacy scrutiny

Clear Secure Inc., the biometrics company that made its name speeding travelers through airport lines, is pushing deeper into health care through a partnership with Mount Sinai Health System—expanding as New York is actively debating whether companies should be allowed to collect biometric identifiers in the first place.

Mount Sinai says it will be the first health system in New York City to deploy CLEAR1, a platform that lets patients and employees verify identity for check-in and digital logins across the system. The move could touch a network that spans seven hospitals and more than 400 outpatient sites, serving hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers each year.

Clear describes CLEAR1 as selfie-based identity verification that uses facial biometrics and “liveness” checks to match a user to an identity document. Mount Sinai declined to detail the exact patient enrollment workflow it will use at launch.

Even with those safeguards, privacy advocates argue that the clinical context changes the pressure dynamics. William Owen, communications director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said identity tools can feel less voluntary when people are sick, scared or trying to get seen quickly. “New Yorkers should not have to hand over their faces to receive healthcare,” he said.

Adrian Gropper, a physician and health IT privacy advocate, said the key issue is whether biometrics remain a bounded safety feature inside a single health system or become part of a broader identity layer that follows patients across organizations and use cases. “The issue is centralized biometrics,” he said, arguing that portability can widen exposure to misuse and hacking and can be difficult for patients to unwind once adopted.

Hospitals already use patient photographs inside electronic records, and research has linked photo display to fewer wrong-patient order entry errors.  Gropper said a photo that stays inside one health system can be a tolerable safety tool. He is more skeptical of identity systems designed to “travel” across multiple touchpoints, because they create durable linkages—and durable records—around who someone is, not just where they’re being treated.

The timing is especially charged because health data itself has become politicized. In a KFF/New York Times survey, 48% of likely undocumented immigrants said they or a family member avoided seeking medical care since January 2025 due to immigration-related concerns. Owen said identity checks—especially ones associated with enforcement-adjacent technologies—can intensify that fear even when hospitals promise separation from law enforcement.

The trust question around healthcare contractors has sharpened in New York. Activists and public officials have recently scrutinized other vendors tied to enforcement agencies, including Palantir Technologies, which has faced criticism over work associated with immigration enforcement; New York City Comptroller Mark Levine has pressed the company to commission an independent human-rights risk assessment tied to DHS and ICE work.

Meanwhile, states have been battling over access to abortion and gender-affirming care, with “shield laws” designed to limit cooperation with out-of-state investigations where care was legal where provided. New York’s shield-law framework reflects a broader push to treat health information as legally sensitive infrastructure. Advocacy groups including S.T.O.P. have warned that prosecutors increasingly seek medical and adjacent records in efforts targeting abortion and gender-affirming care, and that modern recordkeeping can create new vectors for pressure even in protective states.

In Albany, State Sen. John Liu, a Democrat, sponsors a proposed “Biometric Privacy Act” that would require private entities holding biometric identifiers to publish a retention schedule and destroy biometric data within a defined window, require written notice and written release, and bar profiting from biometric identifiers, with carveouts that include photographs and certain healthcare-related information under HIPAA. At City Hall, the City Council is considering a separate bill that would bar places of public accommodation from using biometric recognition technology to verify or identify customers and require written consent, a retention-and-destruction policy, and a right to request erasure, also with carveouts tied to HIPAA-related compliance.

For Clear, Mount Sinai fits a broader push beyond airports into enterprise identity, trying to sell biometric login and verification as infrastructure for regulated industries. The company recently reported fourth-quarter revenue of $240.8 million, up 16.7 percent, and forecast at least $440 million in free cash flow in 2026, positioning expansion outside travel as a growth driver.

For New Yorkers, the fight is simpler: when the “fast lane” biometrics company shows up at the hospital door, the real question is whether face ID is becoming the price of entry to essential services, and what happens to the people who can’t, or won’t, pay it.

About the author

Georgia Fearn is a New York-based journalist and a Marjorie Deane Fellow in NYU’s Business & Economic Reporting M.A. program. She is a University of Cambridge law graduate and a business editorial intern at Observer. Her reporting focuses on technology, privacy, and regulation.

Article Topics

biometric liveness detection  |  biometrics  |  CLEAR  |  CLEAR1  |  digital identity  |  healthcare  |  identity verification  |  New York City  |  patient identification  |  selfie biometrics