Lawsuit filed by the Texas attorney general says Facebook’s face recognition practises have resulted in “tens of millions” in state privacy breaches.
When Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton brought the case on Monday, it focused on the company’s collection of biometric data from user-uploaded images. Facebook used to do this until November 2021, when it decided to stop.
It’s been “secretly capturing Texans’ most sensitive information—photos and videos—for its business profit,” Paxton said in a statement. The practise of harvesting without informed permission has been outlawed in Texas for more than two decades.
Meta said that the charges are “unsubstantiated” and that it intends to fight back “vigorously.”
Previously, Facebook’s policy centred on identifying and alerting users when they appeared in other people’s images and videos.
A source familiar with the case tells the Wall Street Journal that Texas is pursuing civil fines that might total hundreds of billions of dollars.
In 2020, Facebook agreed to pay $650 million to resolve an Illinois lawsuit over its face recognition methods. A civil subpoena was filed to social media giant Facebook after the settlement was made public, asking for information on the company’s face recognition software.
Additionally, Facebook said that it will restrict the use of face recognition technology and destroy any previously collected facial data.
In Texas, biometric identifiers cannot be collected without the informed permission of the subject. In addition, it prevents businesses from disclosing their customers’ biometric information to other parties.
The maximum penalty for a breach of the Texas legislation is $25,000, which may only be enforced by the state attorney general. According to the lawsuit, 20 million Texans were using Facebook in 2021.