With so much focus on California’s Consumer Privacy Act, its Jan. 1 effective date, the proposed regulations implementing it, the revisions to those proposed regulations, and so on, it can be tempting to overlook another state privacy law that has been on the books for more than a decade: the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
But this state law, enacted in 2008 to foster greater transparency and security regarding the collection and use of biometric data, has been generating some headlines of its own lately. Facebook had to pay $550M in a settlement related to it, Jumio recently settled a class action, and Google is facing a new one. Even as businesses scramble to comply with California’s law, the perhaps lesser known Illinois statute seems to be gaining traction in terms of litigation and settlements.
