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Wendy's Faces Lawsuit For Unlawfully Collecting Employee Fingerprints (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: A class-action lawsuit has been filed in Illinois against fast food restaurant chain Wendy's accusing the company of breaking state laws in regards to the way it stores and handles employee fingerprints. The complaint is centered around Wendy's practice of using biometric clocks that scan employees' fingerprints when they arrive at work, when they leave, and when they use the Point-Of-Sale and cash register systems.

Plaintiffs, represented by former Wendy's employees Martinique Owens and Amelia Garcia, claim that Wendy's breaks state law -- the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) -- because the company does not make employees aware of how it handles their data. More specifically, the lawsuit claims that Wendy's does not inform employees in writing of the specific purpose and length of time for which their fingerprints were being collected, stored, and used, as required by the BIPA, and nor does it obtain a written release from employees with explicit consent to obtain and handle the fingerprints in the first place. Wendy's also doesn't provide a publicly available retention schedule and guidelines for permanently destroying employees' fingerprints after they leave the company, plaintiffs said. [The plaintiffs also claim that Wendy's sends this data to a third-party without their consent.]

2 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This shit is dangerous, but government is worse by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    "Get over it, find real problems to have."

    Like the guy who, after a few years of paying child support to a woman he had divorced, found out through DNA testing that the kid wasn't his, went to court, but the judge STILL upheld that he had to pay child support until the child turned 19!

    That's some seriously fucked up shit right there!

  2. Re:This shit is dangerous, but government is worse by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    I know a case where the man was known not to be the father before both the birth and the divorce. He still had to pay both child support and alimony (the father absconded.) Many judges make foul decisions.

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