ILLINOIS · GURNEE · FINGERPRINT COLLECTION · BIPA

A 14-year-old was fingerprinted at Six Flags; his mother said she learned about it only after the school trip.

Season-pass enrollment → thumb scan and storage → no alleged written consent → landmark Illinois Supreme Court ruling

WHERE

Gurnee · Lake County · IL

View this place in the Illinois surveillance directory →

In 2014, 14-year-old Alexander Rosenbach visited Six Flags Great America in Gurnee on a school field trip after his mother purchased him a season pass. According to the complaint described by the Illinois Supreme Court, Alexander was directed to scan his thumb into Six Flags' biometric system before receiving his pass.

His mother, Stacy Rosenbach, alleged that she learned about the fingerprinting only after he returned home and said the park did 'it all by fingerprint now.' The complaint alleged that neither mother nor son had received the required written disclosure explaining the purpose and retention period, and neither had provided the written release required by Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act.

In 2019, the Illinois Supreme Court held that a person does not need to allege some additional injury beyond violation of BIPA's statutory biometric-privacy rights to qualify as an aggrieved person entitled to seek relief.

Why it matters: Illinois law treats notice and consent as part of the privacy right itself. The harm BIPA addresses is not limited to identity theft after the fact; it includes losing control over whether a company gets the biometric identifier in the first place.

Primary source: Illinois Supreme Court — Rosenbach v. Six Flags, 2019 IL 123186

WHY THIS LIBRARY EXISTS

This page preserves the anecdote and its caveats separately from the shorter Why Privacy Matters explainer. The goal is to keep the argument readable without hiding the receipts.