A Shook, Hardy & Bacon L.L.P attorney testified at the Senate Judiciary Privacy Committee hearing on April 12 in support of a Senate bill amending the Ilinois Biometric Information Protection Act.
Melissa Siebert, a partner and director of Shook's Biometric Privacy Task Force, said that SB0300 “takes BIPA back to its original intent.” She said that in the last 6 months there have been 239 new lawsuits filed mostly against employers.
“They are about Illinois employers both large and very small using time-keeping technology to keep track of time in order to comply with state and federal wage-and-hour law and employees who are using these time-keeping devices voluntarily enroll finger scan and use them,” Siebert said. “This amendment helps us realize BIPA’s intent, which is to give Illinois citizens the opportunity to know who is collecting their data, what it is being used for and when it will be destroyed.”
Introduced by Sen. Jason Barickman (R-Bloomington) in February, SB 300 “Amends the Biometric Information Privacy Act. Changes the definitions of 'biometric information' and 'written consent.'"
The bill also “Provides that a right of action shall be commenced within one year after the cause of action accrued, if, prior to initiating any action against a private entity, the aggrieved person provides a private entity 30 days' written notice identifying the specific provisions of the Act the aggrieved person alleges have been or are being violated.”
Siebert was able to obtain dismissal of a BIPA complaint concerning a hospital’s use of fingerprint scan technology to access prescription drugs. It was the first successful application of BIPA’s Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 exclusion.
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