Can a fingerprint alone provide “testimony” about a person? Earlier this month, a federal court in California said yes. But the court was not engaging in a highly-localized form of palm-reading; rather, the question arose in the ever-evolving field of how to balance law enforcement needs and individual citizens’ privacy interests as new technologies emerge.
The United States District Court for the Northern District of California has been a hotspot for privacy-related litigation,… More
The litigation over Facebook’s Tag Suggestions feature in the United State District Court for the Northern District of California continues, with the court this week denying both sides’ bids for summary judgment in a ten-page order. The case, formerly captioned Patel v. Facebook and now going by the name of In re Facebook Biometric Information Privacy Litigation, is on course to proceed to trial in July.… More
Those of our readers who frequent social media may have noticed a newly-popular juxtaposition between selfies and art (or perhaps one should say between selfies and other forms of art)—a feature in the Google Arts & Culture app that matches a user’s selfie to a portrait in Google’s database.
But not every aspiring selfie artist can compare their work with that of the great painters of yesteryear. … More
On August 18, a federal judge in the Southern District of New York entered an injunction forbidding Verified Identity Pass, Inc. (VIP) to sell or transfer any of the confidential customer information it compiled while operating the CLEAR express airport check-in program. The CLEAR program collected a range of customer biographic information (e.g., name, address, etc.) as well as biometric information, including the customer’s fingerprints and iris scan. This information was used to expedite the airport check-in process.… More