CFA Joins Opposition to Amendment Rendering Illinois Biometric Data Protection Law Useless
In a letter to Illinois State Senator Biss, a coalition of consumer and privacy rights groups is calling on the senator to reject an amendment to Illinois House Bill 6074, which would render the biometric data protection law useless by re-defining biometric data to omit data scanned from images and photographs. BIPA in its current form defines “biometric identifier” as “a retina or iris scan, fingerprint, voiceprint, or scan of hand or face geometry.” This is construed to include photographs and digital photographs, because the scanning of biometric identifiers is almost always based on an image or photograph. To purposefully and specifically exclude photographs and digital photographs, as the proposed amendment does, means BIPA will have the effect of removing Illinois consumers of BIPA’s original protective intent.
