Former Warehouse Worker Sues Amazon Under BIPA

Lisa Johnson, a former Amazon warehouse worker, has filed a class action lawsuit against Amazon.com Services LLC. The lawsuit alleges that the company violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) by collecting and using her facial scans for worker identification during clock-in and clock-out procedures.

Johnson claims that Amazon failed to obtain informed consent before gathering her biometric data. She also asserts that the company did not provide a publicly available written policy outlining a retention and destruction schedule for such data. And she alleges that Amazon shared her information with third-party identity verification services without informing her of the disclosure.

The lawsuit specifically cites violations of sections 14/15(a), 14/15(b), and 14/15(d) of BIPA. Johnson seeks to represent a class of Illinois residents whose biometric data was similarly collected by Amazon.com Services within the past five years.

The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act is a state law regulating the collection, use, storage, and disposal of biometric data, such as fingerprints and facial scans. BIPA requires companies to obtain written informed consent before collecting someone’s biometric data and outlines specific rules regarding its retention and destruction.

This lawsuit isn’t the first time tech giants have faced legal challenges concerning BIPA. In 2022, Illinois residents filed a class action lawsuit against Google, alleging the company collected user data through face scans in photos without proper consent. The case was later settled for a reported $100 million. Similarly, Facebook has faced lawsuits in Illinois regarding its use of facial recognition technology.

The Amazon plaintiff is seeking statutory damages, citing $1,000 per violation and $5,000 for any instances where Amazon acted intentionally or recklessly. The complaint also requests reimbursement of legal fees and any actual damages.

Source: Bloomberg Law

—

April 24, 2024 — by Ali Nassar-Smith

Related News

Partners

FaceTec’s patented, industry-leading 3D Face Verification and Reverification software anchors digital identity, creating a chain of trust from user onboarding to ongoing authentication on all modern smart devices and webcams. FaceTec’s 3D FaceMaps™ finally make trusted, remote identity verification possible. As the only technology backed by a persistent spoof bounty program and NIST/iBeta Certified Liveness Detection, FaceTec is the global standard for 3D Liveness and Face Matching with millions of users on six continents in financial services, border security, transportation, blockchain, e-voting, social networks, online dating and more. www.facetec.com

AuthenticID provides 100% automated identity verification and fraud detection solutions that are leveraged by companies worldwide, including 2 of the top 3 U.S. Banks, 8 out the top 10 wireless providers in North America, and 2 of the 3 credit bureaus. Using proprietary computer vision and machine learning technology, these solutions help companies accurately verify the identity of their users across retail, digital and call center environments for onboarding and ongoing re-authentication events; KYC, IAM, and more. The solutions are easy to integrate and provide customers a large ROI by stopping fraud losses, increasing customer conversion at onboarding, reducing operational costs and allowing quick and cost-effective operational scalability, all while ensuring global privacy regulations are complied with. https://www.authenticid.com/

Anonybit is a privacy-focused technology platform that provides decentralized solutions for securing personal data, particularly biometric information. Rather than storing sensitive data in centralized repositories, which are vulnerable to breaches, Anonybit uses a distributed architecture that breaks data into smaller encrypted bits and stores them across a network of decentralized nodes. This approach ensures that no single entity has access to the full dataset, enhancing privacy and security, even preventing insider threats. Anonybit is used by leading banks, fintechs and other enterprises for critical biometric identity functions like deduplication and blocklist checks, step up authentication, passwordless login and account recovery https://anonybit.io/

Identity Week aims to be a significant identity industry catalyst. It’s our mission is to help accelerate the move towards a world where trusted identity solutions enable governments and commercial organisations to provide citizens, employees, customers and consumers with a multitude of opportunities to transact in a seamless, yet secure manner. All the while preventing the efforts of those intent on doing harm. https://identityweek.net/

The Biometric Digital Identity Prism is a market landscape framework designed to help influencers and decision makers understand, innovate, and implement digital identity technologies and solutions. This innovative framework for understanding and evaluating the rapidly evolving biometric digital identity marketplace is the only market model that is truly biometric-centric based on the foundational conviction that in the age of digital transformation the only true, reliable link between humans and their digital data is biometrics. https://www.the-prism-project.com

ID R&D is an innovator of biometric facial liveness, document liveness, and voice biometrics. Ranked #1 by NIST, our patented passive approach to liveness, and specialized detection of voice clones, injection attacks and deepfakes, empowers KYC and authentication systems with fast, accurate and secure biometric verification technologies. Over 140 partners in more than 70 countries are collectively processing hundreds of millions of identity checks per year. ID R&D solutions easily integrate with mobile, web, messaging, smart speakers, set-top boxes, and IoT devices. Learn more: www.idrnd.ai

Related News

Footer

Follow Us