BIPA Suit Filed Against Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the subject of a lawsuit for violating the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act (BIPA).

This is the latest in a string of BIPA violation suits filed against major corporations in the state of Illinois, where the act aims to protect individuals from having their biometric data recorded, stored, or used without their written consent.

The lawsuit was filed on November 15th by plaintiff Martin Ragsdale and claims that AWS — the cloud computing subsidiary of tech giant Amazon — failed to obtain his informed, written consent that it would be capturing and using his biometric data.

In this specific case, the plaintiff alleges that even though AWS didn’t collect the biometric data itself, it stores data collected by commercial customers on its servers and doing so without consent of the person the data belongs to is a BIPA violation. Ragsdale alleges that BIPA prevents private entities like AWS from storing biometric data regardless of whether they were the ones who collected it, or if they convert the data to another format if consent wasn’t granted for its collection in the first place.

Amazon joins Wallgreens, WeWork, The Home Depot, Lowes, Keurig Dr. Pepper, and Rivers Casino as the latest major corporations to find themselves before the Circuit Court of Cook County as the defendant in a BIPA case.

Source: Bloomberg Law

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November 18, 2019 – by Tony Bitzionis