Here's why tech companies keep paying millions to settle lawsuits in Illinois

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Illinois is one of just a few states in the U.S. that has a law requiring companies to get consumers' consent before snagging their biometric data

, and in some cases curbing the behavior of tech companies offering products and services in the state. In the process, it has sent a message about the importance of personal data privacy that reverberates far beyond Illinois.In Illinois, BIPA came about at least partly due to concerns over data gathered by a bankrupt fingerprint-scanning payment company, which then went belly-up.

That right to sue "has been one of the only ways you get companies to take compliance seriously," said Hayley Tsukayama, a senior legislative activist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group. "And it is of course one reason the people who hate it hate it with a burning passion."

Facebook agreed to settle the suit in early 2020 for $550 million, and a judge increased that amount to $650 million in March of 2021. Edelson has since worked on dozens of BIPA lawsuits and estimates that more than 500 suits have been filed alleging violations under the law.

"I'm not sure that that's a decision they would have made were it not for BIPA, but certainly making that decision removes the possibility of BIPA non-compliance with facial images, and facial geometry," said Lior Strahilevitz, a law professor at the University of Chicago. Some other companies are limiting features that include biometrics to people who live outside Illinois. This was the case in 2018, when Google added a feature to its Google Arts

 

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