Articles Tagged with BIPA

733EA402-0266-44C9-9EA7-FA3D89BB89FA-300x200Only if every single person on the call actually consents, and that requirement is a lot stricter than most businesses using these tools realize. Illinois is one of the toughest states in the country on recording consent, and AI note takers, Otter, Fireflies, Zoom’s AI companion, Microsoft Teams transcription, and similar tools, don’t get a pass just because a person didn’t personally hit a record button. The law treats the AI tool exactly the same as a tape recorder, and in some cases, it creates a second layer of legal risk most businesses have never even considered.

Illinois Law Doesn’t Care How Sophisticated the Tool Is

Illinois is an all-party consent state meaning every participant in a private conversation has to consent before it’s recorded, whether that conversation happens in person, over the phone, or through a video call. The statute defines an eavesdropping device broadly enough to cover any technology capable of recording a conversation, and it explicitly applies to AI transcription tools the same way it applies to a phone recorder. There’s no carveout for automation, no exception because the recording exists to generate a summary instead of an audio file, and no exception because only one person on the call actually chose to turn the tool on.

ECBA7890-9004-47A5-AAC3-AC04083E7043-300x200What happened?

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals held in Clay v. Union Pacific Railroad Co. that the 2024 amendment to Section 20 of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act applies to cases that were already pending when the amendment took effect on August 2, 2024.

What does that mean?

Insurance-Coverage-for-BIPA-Violations-A-Growing-Challenge-for-Illinois-Businesses-300x251

Insurance Coverage for BIPA violations.

Businesses across Illinois are facing serious challenges in securing insurance coverage for lawsuits brought under the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).   And a recent decision by the federal court in Chicago – Westfield Insurance Company v. UCAL Systems, Inc. – dealt yet another blow to corporate policyholders.  This ruling is just the latest in a series of legal setbacks that make obtaining coverage for BIPA claims under standard Commercial General Liability (CGL) policies an uphill battle.

What Is BIPA, and Why Does It Matter?

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