These 2 Big Law Firms Have Just Launched New Teams Focused on Data Privacy. Here's How They're Helping Companies Navigate an Increasingly Complex Regulatory Landscape.
Data privacy seems to be top-of-mind for all companies these days.
As more parts of consumers' lives are being digitized — from banking and transportation to retail and social interaction — there's been an accompanying surge in privacy regulations, which are designed to protect the personal information that's collected in the process.
[...]
Advising clients on how to avoid "landmines" in the "uncharted territory" of biometrics
Blank Rome launched its biometrics privacy team for similar reasons, said Jeffrey Rosenthal, partner at the firm's business litigation team and chair of the new team. He explained that the stakes are even higher, though, simply because of the way biometrics works.
"The stakes are so high because when it comes to things like identity theft or your social security number being stolen or used, there are steps that can be taken to remedy that," he said. "But when it comes to your fingerprint or your facial geometry or the sound of your voice, those are mostly immutable characteristics."
Biometrics is being adopted across more and more industries, from social media, like Facebook's facial recognition technology to automatically tag photos, to business employers, some of whom use fingerprint scanners instead of an old-school punch clock.
Reports show that the global biometrics market accounted for just $17 billion in 2018, but is expected to reach nearly $77 billion by 2027.
Blank Rome's new privacy team, which consists of seven attorneys from compliance, data privacy, and labor employment practices, aims to take a "holistic" approach to help clients "avoid all the landmines in this uncharted territory," said Rosenthal.
With the pandemic, Rosenthal thinks that things like biometrics are only going to be more sought after by companies, especially as people's aversion to touching things has heightened with the highly contagious coronavirus.
"More companies are going to get behind facial recognition, or some other technology that doesn't require physical touch," he said.
Even though Rosenthal and the firm had been thinking about a team dedicated to biometrics for a long time, the pandemic made it all the more necessary to formalize the practice. And work for the new team, Rosenthal projects, will only get busier.
"I think this has only just begun," he said.
To read the full article, please click here.
"These 2 Big Law Firms Have Just Launched New Teams Focused on Data Privacy. Here's How They're Helping Companies Navigate an Increasingly Complex Regulatory Landscape," by Yoonji Han was published in Business Insider on September 23, 2020.