In the News: Workers Push Back as Companies Gather Fingerprints and Retina Scans
Dallas-based partner Billy Hammel recently spoke to The Wall Street Journal about employee lawsuits related to the use and storage of biometric information.
Many lawsuits have been filed following a recent state Supreme Court ruling in Illinois, which has the most stringent privacy law protecting such information in the U.S. Texas and Washington also have biometric privacy laws, but only Illinois grants individuals the private right to sue. Florida and New York are considering laws similar to Illinois’s.
Billy noted that biometric data that is stored in the cloud, transferred to third parties and potentially subject to data breaches could expose workers to risks like identity theft.
“An iris scan looks cool, especially if you’re impressing clients,” he said. “But that data usually has to go somewhere.”
The full article is available online here (subscription required).
