On January 6, 2021, a bipartisan group of New York legislators
proposed the Biometric Privacy
Act, a new law that would
provide for protection of consumers' biometric information. The
bill would require entities that possess biometric information or
identifiers to obtain specific consumer consent for collecting,
capturing, purchasing or trading such information, and would be
privately-actionable as well.
Under the bill, biometric identifiers include: "a retina or
iris scan, fingerprint, voiceprint, or scan of hand or face
geometry." Biometric information means "any information,
regardless of how it is captured, converted, stored, or shared,
based on an individual's biometric identifier used to identify
an individual." Entities that possess such information would
need to develop written policies that are made available to the
public, as well as inform consumers and receive written consent
prior to the collection, capture, purchase or trade of the
biometrics. That
