Hawthorne Race Course sued over facial recognition security system at horse racing track
Cook County IL Dec 24, 2021 The owners of Hawthorne Race Course have improperly used a facial recognition security and surveillance system to scan the faces of everyone who visits its horse racing track, claims a new class action lawsuit under Illinois’ biometrics privacy law.
On Dec. 17, attorneys with the firm of McGuire Law P.C., of Chicago, filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court against Hawthorne Race Course Inc.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of named plaintiff Arviol Mala, identified in the complaint only as an Illinois resident who visited the Hawthorne track in suburban Stickney in late November.
According to the lawsuit, Hawthorne operates a facial recognition system, which is operated by third-party security firm Edot LLC, which does business as DigiTek Security.
According to the complaint, the system captures footage of every visitor to Hawthorne’s track, at the time they enter the facility, using cameras mounted on the ceiling. The system then scans visitors’ faces, based on their so-called facial geometry, which is considered a unique biometric identifier.
The system then allegedly compares those facial scans against a database curated by Hawthorne, to allow track operators and DigiTek to weed out “unwanted visitors” to the track.
The lawsuit does not take aim at Hawthorne for operating such a system, directly.
Rather, the complaint asserts Hawthorne has improperly scanned the faces of visitors, like Mala, without first securing written authorization from those visitors to scan their faces, and share the digital scan data with DigiTek or anyone else for the facial comparisons.
Likewise, the complaint said Hawthorne did not provide notices to visitors about the scans, telling them why their faces may be scanned, and what would ultimately happen to those facial scan images, including how the scans would ultimately be destroyed.
