Case Overview
Plaintiffs allege that Amazon obtained, used, and profited from the biometric data of Amazon Photos account holders and non account holders in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. Plaintiffs allege that Amazon did so by using facial recognition technology to scan the facial geometry of persons whose image was uploaded to Amazon Photos, and then using the biometric data obtained through such scans to train and improve its Rekognition facial recognition software. According to the Complaint, Amazon incorporated Plaintiffs’ and Class Members’ biometric data into Rekognition, which made the application more profitable to businesses and other institutional clients. Plaintiffs allege that Amazon’s conduct violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act in at least three ways: (1) Amazon failed to make public or even create the data-retention and -deletion policy required by § 15(a) of BIPA; (2) Amazon did not obtain the informed written consent from Plaintiffs that is required by § 15(b) of BIPA; and (3) Amazon sold and profited from Plaintiffs’ biometric data in violation of § 15(c) of BIPA.
To learn more about the Plaintiffs’ allegations against the Defendant, please review the Class Action Complaint in the Case Documents section below.
Case Status
Keller Rohrback and its co-counsel filed a class action complaint against Amazon.com, Inc. in federal court in Illinois in July 2021, seeking to certify a class of Illinois residents whose biometric data was obtained by Amazon from photographs uploaded to their Amazon Photos accounts.
On March 30, 2022, the Court issued an Order denying in part and granting in part Amazon’s Motion to Dismiss. The Court remanded some of the claims back to Illinois state court and kept one claim in federal court. You can access the Order in the Case Documents section below. The case is now proceeding to discovery.
On April 19, 2022, the court appointed leadership counsel for this litigation. We are pleased to announce that Keller Rohrback partners Dean Kawamoto, Derek Loeser, and Gretchen Freeman Cappio were appointed as Co-Lead Interim Class Counsel.
We urge you to visit this website periodically, as it will be updated as the litigation progresses.
CONTACT US:
For more information about this case, please email us, call us, or fill out the secure form below.