Chicago City Wire

Illinois Chamber of Commerce government affairs vice president Clark Kaericher testified in the Senate Judiciary Privacy Committee hearing on April 12 in support of Sen. Jason Barickman’s (R-Bloomington) legislation amending the Biometric Information Privacy Act.

The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act targets the unlawful collection of data such as fingerprints and facial recognition but also allows individuals to sue if they believe the gathering of such information was acquired in violation of state regulation. 

A significant concern for businesses has been that the law would fine violators $1,000 per infraction or $5,000 for each incident if the courts determined the actions to be reckless or intentional. Barickman's proposed amendment would change the violation financial penalties to "actual damage" and in cases remove penalties for reckless or intentional data collection in favor of willfully violating the law. 

“We recognize this is important and sensitive information,” Kaericher said. “This clarifies the definition of biometric information is really just biometric information. It's scans of your face or your voice or fingerprints, it is not, and this is important because this is a safety feature that we want to encourage, it's not a numeric code. So you can take a fingerprint scan and store it as a set of numbers. We’re encouraging companies to do that because if there were to be a breach of those numbers you can't really do anything with those numbers. But in BIPA, once again that is the same as a fingerprint scan which would be problematic."

Earlier this year Facebook agreed to pay $650 million to Illinois users for reportedly violating the state's privacy law. 

The law was initially approved in 2008.