Practical Compliance Tips: Illinois Biometric information Privacy Act (“BIPA”)
Of all the targeted state biometric laws currently on the books, none poses more of an existential threat to companies than the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”). BIPA has recently become the darling of the plaintiffs’ bar and the preferred statute under which bet-the-company class actions are being filed. If you have a presence in Illinois and use biometrics in your operations, chances are reasonably good you will be facing down a BIPA complaint at some point. But don’t despair! There are several proactive compliance steps to mitigate or, ideally, avoid such liability. And even after a case has been filed, there are several established (and even more developing) defenses available to minimize liability or obtain an outright dismissal. For example, having an enforceable arbitration agreement can be one of the most effective ways to mitigate the ever-increasing scope of biometric privacy exposure.
At their core, biometric systems analyze unique physical/behavioral human characteristics to identify and verify the identities of individuals. In our personal lives, this means using our faces to unlock our phones, or our eyes to unlock our homes. In our professional lives, companies may be verifying customer identities via facial scans or voice recognition software, or using employee fingerprints to track time and attendance, just to name a few.
To read the full blog post, please visit our Biometric Privacy Insider blog.