By SAMUEL LOPEZ | USA HERALD — August 24, 2025
Chicago — The Home Depot is staring down a new class action that says the retailer quietly turned its self-checkout cameras into biometric capture devices, logging shoppers’ facial geometry without the written notices and consent Illinois law requires.
Filed Friday, Aug. 1, the complaint by Illinois shopper Benjamin Jankowski alleges the hardware chain deployed “computer vision”—a form of artificial intelligence—to mitigate theft by analyzing faces. In one image attached to the filing, a rectangular box appears around Jankowski’s head on a self-checkout screen, which his lawyers say is evidence that scans of facial geometry were “collected, captured, used, and/or stored” during his visit. The lawsuit asserts that no written notice, policy, or consent was provided before the scan occurred.
“Because Home Depot utilizes facial recognition technology, BIPA requires that it: (1) make publicly available written policies containing retention schedules or guidelines for permanently destroying these facial-geometry scans and (2) obtain its customers’ informed, written consent before collecting and disclosing the facial scans. Home Depot does neither,” the complaint alleges.
Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) is one of the strictest privacy laws in the country. In plain English, if a business in Illinois wants to capture biometrics—like a scan of facial geometry—it must do a few things before it happens:
