Meta, Facebook's parent company, faces a lawsuit in Texas after it was accused of illegally saving the data of millions of residents via facial recognition for more than a decade.
Meta Gets Sued in Texas
On Monday, Feb. 14, Texas' Harrison County District Court filed the lawsuit and stated that Facebook's photo-tagging feature did not disclose the terms and conditions of the technology and failed to get the consent of Texans before saving their facial recognition data.
The facial recognition technology analyzes users' faces in the pictures uploaded on the platform and recommends tagging those with whom they are in the picture.
In 2021, Facebook announced it would discontinue the feature just months after it settled a lawsuit in Illinois because of the same issue. Facebook settled the lawsuit for a total of $650 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The tech giant also announced that it would delete data collected from more than 600 million users who had used the feature.
Also Read: $550 Million Settlement: Is It Enough for Facebook to Stop Facial Recognition?
However, Facebook had already collected biometric data in violation of Texas' consumer protection and biometric data privacy laws, as per the lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The biometric data law, the Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act, was passed in 2009.
In response to the lawsuit, a Meta spokesperson said that the claims are without merit and that the company will vigorously defend its operation.
The lawsuit alleges that from 2010 through 2011, the tech giant secretly forced millions of Texas into a facial-recognition scheme without their consent.
As a result, for the next decade, millions of Texans who posted their pictures on social media site unsuspectingly had records of their facial geometry captured by Facebook.
Since several people included in the data that Facebook saved are non-users, the company violated the privacy of those people under state laws, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit marks the culmination of an investigation done by Texas officials for years into Meta's facial recognition software and how it violated Texas law.
The lawsuit also highlights how technology is coming under scrutiny as lawmakers and the public grow more skeptical of platforms such as Facebook.
Even though Facebook suspended the technology, Meta has not applied the same thing to its other platforms such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Reality Labs, and its virtual-reality metaverse that is set to launch in the coming years.
The lawsuit calls for the court to impose a $25,000 civil penalty on Meta per violation of Texas' biometric law and $10,000 per violation of Texas consumer protection law. According to CNN, Paxton is seeking billions of dollars in damages.
Facebook's Facial Recognition Templates
According to NBC News, privacy advocates have questioned the tech giant's practice of scanning pictures for any recognizable faces. They have accused the company of abusing the technology to gather data for its use.
Meta's vice president for artificial intelligence, Jerome Pesenti, released a statement last year to talk about the allegations. He said that Facebook would still use facial recognition for narrow use cases.
The cases would include helping users gain access to a locked account, verifying their identity in products, or effectively unlocking a personal device.
Related Article: Facial Recognition: Threat Vs. Student Privacy? NY Schools May Be Sued
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Written by Sophie Webster
