With three out of four Illinois students still learning remotely full or part time, protecting children's privacy from threats like face recognition and surveillance for remote proctoring is more important than ever.

The Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) is a uniquely protective Illinois law assuring that the biometric information of Illinois residents is protected from the threats of face recognition and surveillance.

➡️ New York Times "The Best Law You've Never Heard of"

Unfortunately, year after year, new legislation is proposed in the IL General Assembly that would weaken or even gut BIPA. And this session is no exception: eleven new bills that would remove key aspects of how BIPA protects our biometric data from exploitation by companies have already been introduced: HB559, HB560, HB1764, HB3112, HB3304, HB3414 and SB56, SB300, SB602, SB1607, SB2039.

Even worse, one of them has already passed in committee this week with the support of 6 Republicans and 4 Democrats, including Reps Tarver, Thapedi, Jones and Hoffman.

If one of those three reps is yours (look up your rep here), please call and ask why they are choosing to support corporations over the individual right to privacy! For any other state rep district and for your state senator, urge them to vote no on HB559 and any other bill that weakens BIPA.

And you can read more about why we need BIPA here:

"A person’s biometric information belongs to them, and only them. This information should never be left to corporate interests who want to collect data and use it for commercial purposes. BIPA is currently the one legislation that makes it unlawful for private companies to use facial recognition technology to identify and track people without their consent. This technology has proven to be both inaccurate and harmful, making it prone to discriminatory effects, especially on women and people of color. Yet, more than a decade after BIPA’s enactment, we constantly hear new examples about companies seeking to collect, share, and misuse personal information of millions of people, without their knowledge or consent. At this critical moment, it is important for state decision makers to continue protecting BIPA under mounting attacks."

We are lucky to have a law like BIPA in Illinois to aid us in this, but it needs our continued vigilance to keep it on the books!