Settlement of BIPA suit against Clearview AI could be days away

A settlement in a U.S. biometric data privacy case involving Clearview AI and other business defendants could be finalized inside a week, according to court documents seen by Biometric Update.

A putative class action alleging that online face photo-scraper Clearview and national retailer Macy’s violated the state of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act has idled for a number of weeks.

The lead plaintiffs and defendants have worked with a mediator to find an acceptable resolution separate from the contentious case (1:21CV00135) in the U.S. District Court for northeastern Illinois.

Both sides have submitted to Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman a joint status report indicating that after working through “numerous” settlement drafts, they have arrived at a mutually acceptable framework for a settlement, first reported by MediaPost.

Lawyers for each side were to have met August 22 with Coleman to answer her questions about the proposed agreement, the next step in getting the judge to approve the settlement and end the case. It’s not known on deadline if the meeting took place.

The case involves at least nine named plaintiffs, six in New York and three in Illinois. The cases were consolidated and heard in Illinois.

Clearview is alleged to have broken Illinois law by not getting the plaintiffs’ consent before collecting their biometric identifiers. They also, according to court documents, broke biometric privacy laws in Virginia, New York and California.

Macy’s is named in the class action because it reportedly used Clearview facial recognition algorithms without getting subjects’ consent. The retail chain alleged collected security video images of 6,000 people in its stores for comparison with the billions of face scans collected by Clearview, according to regional newspaper The Cincinnati Enquirer.

Settlement is apparently an attractive option in another BIPA case, this one involving BNSF Railway.

Article Topics

Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA)  |  biometrics  |  Clearview AI  |  data privacy  |  facial recognition  |  lawsuits