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“Biometric data is particularly sensitive personal information. Once compromised, the individual has no recourse….”
~ Class action lawsuit
Wrigley Field, home to the Chicago Cubs, is Major League Baseball’s second-oldest ballpark, capable of seating nearly 42,000 fans. The adult children of online trading billionaire Joe Ricketts acquired the stadium and the team in 2009 and have pursued ambitious ballpark renovation and adjoining real estate development plans ever since.
In September, fans filed two lawsuits against the Cubs and their security contractors (Blue Star Security and parent company Protos Security), alleging violation of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which prohibits collection of biometric identifiers without written disclosure and the person’s signed authorization:
“Both suits claim the organizations installed a sweeping surveillance network at Wrigley Field that generates and stores ‘faceprints’ of fans and employees without disclosing the practice or obtaining the written consent that Illinois law requires.”
In addition to BIPA violations, the lawsuits allege violations of the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act as well as “unjust enrichment.” The fans who the plaintiffs are seeking to represent could number in the thousands—individuals “who had their biometric data collected, captured, received, obtained, stored, sold, leased, traded, disclosed, redisclosed, disseminated and/or otherwise profited from and/or used by the defendants without their consent”—and damages, if awarded, could add up to millions in penalties.
Alongside the obvious privacy concerns, the lawsuits reference public statements by Blue Star that promote its biometric scanners and facial recognition tools for purposes of “crowd control.”
Encouragingly, reports Reclaim the Net, the lawsuits join a wave of legal pushback against the unannounced deployment of biometric systems in numerous settings. Root for the Cubs if you’d like, but more importantly, root for the Cubs fans who have blown the whistle on these surreptitious and ever-more-pervasive control grid technologies.
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