The Walt Disney Company announced in 2026 that visitors to Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure Park can enter through dedicated lanes equipped with face recognition technology. The company describes participation as “entirely optional,” but notes that guests who use non-face-recognition lanes “may still have your image taken.”
Disney’s system works by converting images of visitors’ faces into a numerical value, which is then used to match faces across other images. The company says these numerical values will be deleted after 30 days, except where data must be retained for legal or fraud-prevention purposes.
The rollout places Disneyland among a growing number of venues using face recognition, including airports and major sports stadiums such as those hosting MLB and NFL games, as well as Madison Square Garden.
In other security news reported the same week, the National Security Agency was among roughly 40 organizations granted early access to Anthropic’s Mythos Preview AI model, according to Bloomberg News and Axios. The NSA used the tool to hunt for vulnerabilities in Microsoft software and found it fast and effective at identifying exploitable bugs. The testing appears to have proceeded despite a Department of Defense ban on Anthropic tools, which followed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s claim that the company posed a supply chain risk. Anthropic has sued to block the ban.
Also this week, Finnish authorities charged 19-year-old Peter Stokes in connection with the Scattered Spider hacking group, which has been linked to breaches at MGM Resorts, Caesars Entertainment, and UK retailers including M&S and Harrods. Stokes was arrested at a Finnish airport while reportedly preparing to board a flight to Japan and is accused of helping steal millions from four victim companies.
Separately, the Washington Post reported that a Medicare database linked to a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services online directory was left exposed on the open internet for at least several weeks, inadvertently revealing Social Security numbers and other personal information belonging to health care providers across the United States.
Source: WIRED