Law360 quoted McGuireWoods partner Alicia Baiardo and associate Anthony Le in a Jan. 15, 2021 story on the continued expansion of biometric privacy laws designed to protect customer data.
Efforts to regulate the collection, use and retention of customer data have intensified as companies increase their uses for biometric information such as face, eye, and fingerprint scans, and voice recognition. While the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act continues to lead the way in biometrics litigation, other recent customer data protection efforts include Federal Trade Commission settlements involving facial recognition technology and a proposed biometric privacy law in New York that would include a private right of action.
Whether states will adopt uniform standards of liability to regulate biometric data is an ongoing topic of interest. New York’s proposal was modeled after Illinois’ longstanding biometrics privacy law, and according to Le, “We can expect to see a lot of states following Illinois’ lead.”
On evolving state and federal legislation, Baiardo said, “States want to increase the level of protection for their consumers, so it will be interesting to see where the debate lands over the competing concerns of uniformity and individual states providing heightened protections.”