A few days ago we shared information about a strongly protective bill in the IL Senate that addressed several areas related to ed tech, protecting student data and AI in schools, SB 3735.

Sadly, that bill has not moved, but the Senate Democratic Caucus has a working group on artificial intelligence, and they released a package of bills that will have a hearing this afternoon in the Senate Executive Committee at 2pm.

We are very concerned about one of those bills related to education, SB 415. Please put in a witness slip to oppose this bill before 2pm!

SB 415 would broaden public schools ability to use biometric information for classroom purposes. Currently, biometric information is only to be used for fraud prevention and identification. We want the state to ban the use of biometric information in schools altogether. (Since 2023 New York State has a partial ban on biometric info use in its public schools, prohibiting the use of face recognition.)

Biometric information is the most sensitive type of digital data. If it is breached, it cannot be replaced because it is biologically unique to each individual. As we have seen breach after breach of education data in Illinois and around the country, it is clear that schools and tech companies cannot ever truly secure our kids’ data. In the case of biometric information, that means it should not be collected at all!

Here’s the link to the witness slip form. Add a position as an OPPONENT of SFA 1 (More general witness slip instructions here.) (Note: SB 415 was originally introduced as a shell bill; the content of the bill is contained in Senate Floor Amendment 1.)

Please also give your State Senator a call and ask that they vote NO on SB 415 if it is called on the Senate floor.

You can ask instead that they sign on as a sponsor of SB 3735, a more comprehensive bill addressing the use of AI in schools which would ban the collection of biometric information altogether.

Thanks for your advocacy on this important issue. Please keep an eye out for more updates on this legislation. We will have more action alerts if it continues to move.