The New York Police Department has finally finished deleting what was an illegal database of fingerprints obtained from juvenile offenders more than two years after being ordered to do so by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS). Calls to delete the database originated in 2014 after an arrest of a youth…
A large coalition of organizations and trade associations has asked Congress to reconsider public bans on facial recognition technology. The group sent a letter to leading Democrat and Republican lawmakers, encouraging them to establish clear federal guidelines in collaboration with industry representatives. According to the Security Identity Association (SIA), the letter is part of a…
One of the world’s biggest insurers is warning about the risks of biometric privacy legislation. The warning comes by way of Chubb’s latest Cyber InFocus report, with Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (or “BIPA”) being singled out as one of two salient digital issues in the insurance industry right now. (The other, ‘iEncrypt’, is a…
“This is largely in relation to the WhatsApp messaging app owned by Facebook, through which information deemed to be a public threat can be promulgated.” Facebook wants India’s Supreme Court to decide whether it can be compelled to share users’ Aadhaar information with law enforcement authorities. The company is facing similar lawsuits in four different…
“The hearings, held at a court in Cardiff, heard from South Wales Police barrister Jeremy Johnson QC, who explained that the facial recognition technology only looks for matches against police watch lists, and that if no match is found for a given subject, their biometric data is deleted immediately.” Hearings are now underway in the…
The legal debate over whether police can compel criminal suspects to unlock their smartphones with biometrics has reached its highest profile yet, with the news that FBI investigators sought permission to use Michael Cohen’s fingerprints or face to unlock his iPhone. Cohen has been near the center of the ongoing investigation into possible campaign violations…
Chicago-based law firm Hahn Loeser & Parks has opened a new Biometric Privacy Practice Group aimed at supporting clients fighting claims under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. It’s the latest sign of what may be a growing niche in the state’s legal field, after a landmark Illinois Supreme Court ruling in January that clearly…
Shook, Hardy, and Bacon has added two biometrics specialists to its corporate litigation team in Illinois. The law office has announced that attorneys Melissa Siebert (a new Partner) and Erin Bolan Hines (Of Counsel) will be handling complex biometrics lawsuits as members of the firm’s Business Litigation, Employment and Privacy and Data Security Practices department.…
The Illinois Supreme Court has issued its ruling on a pivotal case concerning the state’s biometric privacy law, with a unanimous decision upholding its broad scope. The case, Rosenbach v. Six Flags, was brought forward by the mother whose son was, at the age of 14, fingerprinted at the Six Flags amusement park as part…
“Thanks to the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination, criminal suspects can’t be compelled to divulge their passcodes for unlocking their phones; but some have argued that biometric scans are not information, and therefore can’t be subject to the same limitation.” Another judge has weighed in on the issue of whether police have the right to…
Following a high-profile human rights complaint, the Police Service of Northern Ireland has committed to establishing and publishing a formal policy concerning its retention of biometric data from criminals. The case was brought forward by the country’s Human Rights Commission in support of a claim from an anonymous individual whose fingerprint and DNA data were…
“Even if government authorities can’t make Aadhaar authentication mandatory, they can still accept it from citizens who prefer to use it.” Just a few months after a Supreme Court ruling laid out restrictions to how India’s national biometric ID program can be used, the national government has amended legislation governing the Aadhaar program to make…
A lawsuit against Google based on the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, or BIPA, has been dismissed by a district court judge – but that doesn’t mean the case is closed for good. The case was launched in 2016 by a woman who unwittingly had her imaged captured by a Google Photos user in 11…
A case that could ultimately defang Illinois’ biometric privacy law is now underway before the state’s Supreme Court. It revolves around the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, or BIPA, a law passed back in 2008 that essentially requires organizations to obtain informed consent from individuals before collecting their biometric data. The biometric revolution in consumer…