Welcome back for another week of What's Next, where we report on the intersection of law and technology. This week, we take a look at a lawsuit accusing Apple of using facial recognition to accuse the wrong person of shoplifting. Plus, questions are surfacing again over when the government tells companies about software exploits it's discovered. As always, thanks for reading.

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Facing the Facts

The Illinois Supreme Court made waves earlier this year after ruling that a 14-year-old boy's rights were violated under Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act after Six Flags collected and stored his fingerprint for park access without prior required notice and release. Some attorneys thought the ruling might lead to a flood of biometric suits, and whether that actually comes to fruition remains to be seen. But where it might see its most immediate application is in an area of technology that a lot more companies are familiar with: facial recognition.

Last week, an 18-year-old New Yorker named Ousmane Bah sued Apple, alleging he was misidentified in a string of Apple store thefts. What's interesting, though, is that the suit alleges the misidentification occurred through facial recognition technology, as allegedly relayed to Bah by an NYPD officer. Apple claims it doesn't use this technology, but the mere mention of it should raise some eyebrows—especially in Illinois, where that aforementioned BIPA allows for a private cause of action for violations.