4 biometric data privacy lawsuits not sufficient to prove corporate wrongdoing

Four lawsuits filed against Amazon under Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act do not constitute a credible basis for accusations of corporate malfeasance, Bloomberg Law reports a Washington Appeals Court has ruled.

An Amazon shareholder filed the suit against the company under the Delaware General Corporation Law would have forced the company to disclose records to the plaintiff. The plaintiff made similar allegations about Rekognition, demographic disparities, IBM’s Diversity in Faces, and Flickr to the Vance et al v. Amazon lawsuit.

The company has faced down shareholder revolts of various kinds related to biometrics before, and continues to face claims that it failed to obtain informed consent from Illinois residents before capturing their biometrics.

Among them, a federal judge in the Western District of Washington recently ruled that Amazon and its cloud service subsidiary AWS must defend themselves from accusations that they violated BIPA rules requiring informed consent for data storage and collection, and restrict data sharing and disclose, stipulated in BIPA 15(a) through 15(d), according to the decision (via Law360).

The plaintiff’s claims are on behalf of a minor living in Illinois who played the video game NBA 2K.

BIPA defendant scorecard: 2 wins, 1 loss, 1 to-be-determined

Honeywell has removed a biometric data privacy suit alleging failures under BIPA by its Vocollect brand to federal court, writes Law360. As a class action with potential damages over $5 million, over 100 potential class members, and minimal diversity among them, the suit is removable under all three criteria of the Class Action Fairness Act.

Vocollect makes headsets for warehouse and logistics worker-management.

Clearview AI is pushing back on allegations from the plaintiffs in a biometric data privacy suit, asking a judge to reject their motion for discovery sanctions.

The plaintiffs allege the company was slow to produce documents regarding the plaintiffs, company contracts and the results of database text searches. Clearview counters that in the first two cases, oversights were quickly corrected, and that the latter is subject of a pending motion.

Like Amazon, pizza delivery chain Papa John’s motion to dismiss a proposed class action, this one from employees, has been denied. The claims are timely, based on the recent state supreme court decision on time limits, and the claims are plausible, Judge John Robert Blakey writes in the decision. Further, the claims are not pre-empted by Illinois’ Workers’ Compensation Act, and a disagreement about what form damages should take does not apply at this stage in the proceedings.

A complaint against restaurant point-of-sale system maker HungerRush has been dismissed by an Illinois federal court judge for lack of jurisdiction, again reported by Law360. HungerRush does not collect biometric data, its software merely works with third party fingerprint scanners, and the company has limited contact with the state, the judge ruled.

Article Topics

Amazon  |  biometric data  |  Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA)  |  biometrics  |  Clearview AI  |  data privacy  |  Honeywell  |  lawsuits