Class Action Claims Home Depot Facial Recognition Security Cameras Violate Illinois Privacy Law

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The Home Depot, Inc. has been hit with a proposed class action lawsuit in which four Illinois shoppers claim the home improvement chain’s facial recognition security cameras overstep a state privacy law.

Citing alleged violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), the 25-page case out of Georgia claims Home Depot surreptitiously collects and stores shoppers’ faceprints every time they appear on a store’s security cameras, enabling the retailer to track each customer’s movement through the store. As explained in the complaint:

“Defendants begin tracking customers as soon as they enter Home Depot stores. Home Depot’s security cameras and its checkout cameras operate on a connected system, with facial-recognition technology running on the footage obtained. As the customer walks through the store and makes their way toward checkout, the facial-recognition software tracks their every movement, through and beyond their purchase.”

The lawsuit explains that Home Depot’s facial recognition systems, which are supposedly framed as a loss-prevention effort, work by scanning video footage of a shopper’s face “for certain geometric points” and then storing the data string as a person’s “faceprint.” The software can then effectively “track” customers’ movements throughout the store and even across multiple store locations to identify “suspicious” activity, the suit says. Though the retailer has reportedly remained silent regarding its facial recognition practices, the lawsuit alleges that the technology is used across all 76 Home Depot locations in Illinois.

According to the plaintiffs, Home Depot’s faceprint tracking violates the BIPA, which prevents entities from collecting and storing an individual’s biometric data, such as faceprints, without obtaining their informed consent. The case claims that Home Depot has not only failed to inform shoppers that their biometric data is being collected and obtain their written consent for doing so, but has also neglected to post a publicly available retention schedule detailing when the data will be destroyed. As a result, the suit argues, Home Depot shoppers in Illinois are owed up to $5,000 for each time their information was unlawfully collected by the retailer.