(credit: Judit Klein)
Yesterday, Illinois senator Terry Link filed an amendment to the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) to relax rules on the collection of facial recognition data, and he attached that amendment to an unrelated bill pertaining to unclaimed property. But on Friday morning, the senator's spokesperson reached out to Ars saying that the bill "had been put on hold," although he would not comment on the reasons for the decision, nor would he speak to when or if the amendment might be revived. If it passes, the amendment would pull the rug out from under a number of lawsuits filed against Facebook, Google, and Snapchat for using facial recognition in photo tagging.
At first, it seemed that the amendment would be quietly pushed through the legislative process. A law firm representing plaintiffs in the Facebook case suggested that Sen. Link proposed the amendment yesterday and added it to a bill that has been languishing since February so that state representatives would move to quickly pass the amendment before Memorial Day.
But Link's amendment has drawn concern from privacy advocates. The Center for Democracy and Technology wrote that the piece of legislation was proposed "without time for sufficient public debate, less than a week before the end of a legislative session" in an "undemocratic maneuver that minimizes the potential for public engagement on a vital issue of policy and technology." The Electronic Privacy Information Center also wrote that the amendment "would undercut legal protections, exempting facial recognition software from the law." Chris Dore, a partner at the firm representing the Illinois plaintiffs, said that the Illinois Attorney General had also come out this morning against Link's amendment. The Attorney General's Office confirmed to Ars that it is opposed to the changes, although it gave no further statement.
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