Facebook loses first round in facial recognition lawsuit
A lawsuit against Facebook's popular photo-tagging feature will move forward, a federal judge in California ruled Thursday, clearing a significant hurdle for the plaintiffs.
The court's decision marks yet another loss for tech companies in the area of user privacy. Last March聽聽in Illinois. Shutterfly, a company that uses face recognition for its ThisLife cloud storage platform, suffered a blow in January when a judge in聽.
Privacy advocates are against the face recognition technology because they say these companies may be supplying biometric data to government authorities without the user's consent, after it emerged that the FBI鈥檚 standard warrant to social media companies s, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reports.
The latest complaint,聽 alleges that Facebook鈥檚 feature violates the state鈥檚 Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The law, passed in 2008, prohibits tech companies from collecting and storing the biometric data of consumers 鈥� including, fingerprints, 鈥渧oice prints,鈥� scans of 鈥渉and or face geometry,鈥� 鈥� without the user's consent.
The case was transferred to California at Facebook鈥檚 request, , the Wall Street Journal reported. 聽
Facebook had argued that the users had agreed to the user agreement which is governed under California law, which doesn鈥檛 require consumers consent. Illinois and Texas are the only states that regulate how private companies may use biometric data, and there aren鈥檛 any federal laws that govern the use of biometric data.
But US District Judge James Donato rejected the company's request, contending that taking a position with the company will deal a blow to Illinois privacy laws.
鈥淏ut if California law is applied, the Illinois policy of protecting its citizens鈥� privacy interests in their biometric data, especially in the context of dealing with 鈥榤ajor national corporations鈥� like Facebook, , wrote Donato in the Ruling issued Thursday.
鈥淭he Court accepts as true plaintiffs' allegations that Facebook's face recognition technology involves a scan of face geometry that was done without plaintiff's' consent,鈥� Donato wrote.
Facebook鈥檚 photo-tagging system 鈥� first introduced in 2010 鈥� uses facial recognition technology to identify faces when users upload photos and automatically matches names to faces, allowing users to easily see their friends. It is , according to the Verge. The technology , which is just 0.25 percent shy of human recognition ability.
Facebook has said that its user agreement terms allow users to opt out of being tagged by friends, but Jay Edelson, an attorney who represents the plaintiff who first filed the complaint against Facebook , he told the Chicago Tribune last year.
鈥淚f he changed the privacy setting, that wouldn鈥檛 change anything because (Facebook) had taken his data and they鈥檙e holding on to it,鈥� Edelson said. 鈥淭here鈥檚 no delete button.鈥�
