Sean Wieber Discusses Spree of Biometric Privacy Lawsuits in Corporate Counsel

Sean Wieber, partner and co-chair of Winston’s Global Privacy & Data Security and Regulated Personal Information (RPI) practice groups, discussed the use of biometric technology used by tech companies and a spree of litigation that has come forward in recent years by plaintiff’s attorneys citing alleged privacy violations under Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), passed in 2008, which requires, amongst other things, appropriate consent from anyone whose biometric information is collected.

With tech companies eager to take advantage of biometrics for the purpose of, for example, better authenticating users, and plaintiff’s attorneys seeing the latest string of privacy-related victories as a huge business opportunity, Sean added that he believes there will continue to be an upward trend of lawsuits of this nature.

“I think we’re just scratching the surface,” Sean said. He added that “I just cannot see a way in which we’re ever going to see, in the foreseeable future, a downward trend.”

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