Welcome back to Emlix's podcast, the first for the year. I hope you've managed to take a break

and that you're looking forward to what 2022 has in store. Hopefully things will be a little easier than they have been in

2021. My name is James Panicki. I'm from Emlex's Asia Pacific team and now make sure you've

scanned your eye retinas and handed over all of your biometric data for today's program because

we'll be taking a look at the many but

largely unsuccessful attempts to regulate the acquisition and storage of such data in

the US and for antitrust fans in about 10 minutes time we'll be crossing to

Southeast Asia to discuss Singapore's attempts to have competition and environmental

policy settings working alongside one another in perfect harmony. It's something that's likely

to resonate across the region. First up though, yes, we are now all familiar with biometric data.

In fact, you could argue that we always have been. It's hard to think of a TV crime show where the detective doesn't refer to fingerprints, for example. But the collection and storage of biometric data is now occurring on an industrial scale. In the US, where there's no national privacy legislation in place, it has been

left to the states to attempt to create a regulatory framework, and it hasn't been an especially

successful endeavour so far. Amy Miller is a senior correspondent covering privacy, data

security and antitrust from our offices in San Francisco, and she

joins me now. So, Amy, why did so many states propose bills relating to biometric information?

Well, there's been growing concerns over the misuse of this highly sensitive personal information,

and it's been fueling government

investigations, and it's also led to some eye-popping class action settlements with tech

companies.

And in general terms, what did these proposals from U.S. States aim to do? What was the

intention? Well, most of the state biometric

proposals are modeled after the 2008 Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, or BIPA, as it's commonly

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