Lawsuit Dropped

As we speculated, on private property that you voluntarily enter, your options are limited:

• The Chicago Cubs have apparently emerged unscathed from two lawsuits that accused the team and its security contractors of secretly collecting facial data from fans at Wrigley Field. Attorneys representing plaintiffs in both of the recently filed cases have abruptly withdrawn the lawsuits just weeks after filing their original complaints.

  In federal court, attorneys notified the judge last week that they were voluntarily dismissing their case against the Cubs, Blue Star Security, and Connecticut-based Protos Security. A similar filing followed on Wednesday in the Circuit Court of Cook County, ending a state-level complaint that mirrored the federal case.

  Neither filing offered any reasons for the sudden reversal. Both actions had been filed in September and quickly gained national attention for accusing one of Major League Baseball’s most storied franchises of violating Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), a law that carries steep financial penalties for the unauthorized collection of biometric data. Individuals claiming BIPA violations can seek damages of $1,000 for each negligent violation or $5,000 for each reckless one, with every unauthorized scan counting as a separate infraction.

Has anyone been to any of the airports lately? We have, and guess what's everywhere?

• facial recognition cameras

You can see some of them, but it's the ones you don't see that are truly impressive. It's not just overhead, but eye-level and waist-level looking up. Thousands of cameras, all recording 24/7/365. The data storage fees are astronomical (pretty much federally funded.)

We still have a few friends who work at the airports and they tell us that the moment you set foot onto airport property, TSA can track you continuously via camera and facial recognition software, from entry point until boarding, from exiting the plane through baggage claim, customs, all the way to parking, cabs or public transportation. 

And that's the government. Casinos do it. No reason to think that any venue that you voluntarily pay to enter for entertainment wouldn't be doing it.