A Texas company that makes touchless body temperature scanning kiosks has been hit with a class action lawsuit under Illinois biometrics privacy law, accusing them of improperly capturing face scans of people using their products.
Attorneys Ryan Stephan and Catherine Mitchell, of the firm of Stephan Zouras, of Chicago, filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court against Wello Inc. The lawsuit, filed in February, was brought on behalf of named plaintiff Harry Nicholson and a class of potentially thousands of other workers in Illinois whose body temperatures may have been checked at Illinois workplaces by Wello technology.
According to the complaint, Nicholson worked as a janitor at the Ryder Truck Rental facility in suburban Romeoville. While Nicholson was employed there, the company began using the touchless body temperature checkers provided by Wello, to help monitor the wellness of their workers when they reported for work.
According to the complaint, Wello's technology reportedly reads and stores workers' various biometric identifiers, including facial geometry, retinas and irises, when it captures and stores workers' body temperature data.
According to its website, Wello claims its temperature monitoring kiosks "lower the risk of contagious illness in your workplace and keep operations humming along at full speed."
The lawsuit asserts Wello did not first secure written authorization from workers before scanning their faces and other biometric identifiers. The company was also accused of failing to provide notices to Nicholson and other workers using the Wello scanners, concerning how their biometric information would be stored, used, shared and ultimately destroyed.
BIPA violations could subject companies to damages of $1,000 per each negligent violation and $5,000 for each intentional or reckless violation. Individual violations could be defined under the law as each time a workers' temperature and face image were scanned and stored by the Wello technology.