Wendy's facing a class action lawsuit against collecting fingerprint data from staff

Wendy's fast-food chain is facing legal action in Illinois over its use of fingerprint scanners to track employees at the point of sale, according to court documents obtained by ZDNet.

The complaint, a class action lawsuit filed by Martinique Owens and Amelia Garcia, former employees of Wendy's, argues that the use of Discovery NCR Corporation fingerprint readers to track employee hours and access cash registers and Information Privacy Act (BIPA) systems. Namely, BIPA requires that employees be notified in writing "of the specific purpose and duration of the collection, storage and use of their fingerprints," writes ZDNet. form of writing to collect and use their biometric data. The plaintiffs say that Wendy does not do it.

According to ZDNet, the plaintiffs say that Wendy does not even inform staff of what will happen to their fingerprints if they resign, are fired or leave the company:

The complainants indicated that Wendy also does not provide a publicly available retention schedule and guidelines to permanently destroy employees' fingerprints after they leave the company.

… Wendy did not respond to a request for comment. Plaintiffs' lawyers declined to comment when they arrived.

In its complaint, ZDNet added that the complainants had written that biometric information such as fingerprints was unique and permanent and that their manipulation could expose employees to "serious and irreversible risks". whether the fast food chain sold and / or rented data or used it to track employees.

BIPA itself was created as a result of Pay By Touch, a biometric point-of-sale authentication company that promised to revolutionize retail by allowing customers to simply touch a sensor to purchase products. like the grocery store. He then broke down after allegations of mismanagement and securities fraud.

As the company collapsed, it became clear that the fingerprint and bank data collected by the stores that had installed the Pay By Touch terminals were found in its central servers. This has potentially made it eligible for resale to the highest bidder, noted ZDNet. Even at the time, newspapers noted that theft of a unique biometric identifier could be a bigger problem than the loss of other data, such as a social security number. (Just look at the Aadhaar database in India, which is said to be plagued by counterfeiting and fraud, and the potential for using biometrics in mass surveillance programs.)

BIPA's move triggered a number of legal battles between technology giants like Facebook and Google on the one hand and consumers who said that biometrics was collected without explicit consent. Alphabet, Google's parent company, has launched a lobbying campaign to subtract photos from the law, according to Bloomberg. Most of the BIPA lawsuits, however, involved employers who collected personnel data.