Identity recognition via social media pictures and sound
Biometric information like face and voice recognition has become a huge and potentially costly area as tech companies plow tons of money and powerful artificial intelligence technologies into photo and video applications that can identify people with an accuracy that would have seemed like science fiction only a few years ago.
Laws curbing these programs can be a huge burden for tech companies, because following the laws could mean slowing the arrival of new features or creating a patchwork of features that could be turned off and on in various states.
While the state violations are often small -- the Illinois act gives citizens the right to sue for up to $5,000 per violation -- potential liability can run to billions or even trillions of dollars once multiplied across hundreds of millions of individual users. That has made privacy law a lucrative new area for class-action lawyers who can extract multimillion-dollar settlements just by bringing a case.
Nevertheless, questions of how much tech companies should be allowed to do without notifying their users will multiply, especially as people adopt more live video and voice technologies that have already made it possible for tech companies to identify people who might not even use their services.
"It's basically a company creating the ability to capture someone's identity when they might not want to reveal their identity," Mr. Marc Rotenberg said.
The Biometric Information Privacy Act was passed in Illinois in 2008 and has quickly become the bane of social media companies. Under the current law, companies have to get a user's consent before turning on features that scan and store faces for identification.