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Privacy advocates won a crucial victory in court on Friday as the Illinois Supreme Court rejected a case that would have wiped out a state's law restricting the use of facial recognition and other biometric elements.
Adopted in 2008, the Illinois Biometrics Confidentiality Act (or BIPA) requires the explicit agreement of companies to collect biometric markers from their customers, including fingerprint and facial recognition models. The law has become a stumbling block for a number of technology companies using facial recognition as a photo sorting tool. Facebook and Google have both been prosecuted for alleged violations of the BIPA code in their photo tagging products. Facebook has repeatedly called for legislative revisions of the law, but without success so far.
The most recent case comes from Six Flags, who allegedly took fingerprints of a 14-year-old visitor without parental permission. Contesting the case, Six Flags argued that it could only be held liable if the plaintiff showed tangible harm from unauthorized collection, which was often a difficult task in privacy prosecutions. If successful, Six Flags' would have greatly limited the power of BIPA and made facial recognition much easier for companies like Facebook and Google.
However, the Illinois Supreme Court was finally not convinced by the thesis that "a person does not need to have suffered real harm beyond the breach." of his rights under the law ". In Illinois, companies that collect biometric data will need to do so with caution. , which the court considered a reasonable intention of the law itself. "Whatever the expenses that a company may incur to comply with the requirements of the law," the judgment says, "will likely be insignificant compared to the substantial and irreversible harm that could result if biometric identifiers and information are not properly protected. "
The decision was welcomed by privacy groups and the concerns of certain corporate groups. The Electronic Frontier Foundation applauded this decision, calling it a crucial victory for the protection of privacy. "As biometric collection, use, and sharing become more prevalent and invasive every year, it is becoming increasingly important for private citizens to sue under laws like BIPA to protect their lives." private, "wrote the group in a message.
The Illinois Chamber of Commerce has had a different answer. "We are concerned that today's decision paves the way for future lawsuits to the detriment of Illinois' commercial health," the group said in a statement.
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