Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing Meta for collecting biometric data from millions of Texans without their consent. The lawsuit demands billions of dollars as recompense.
Paxton filed the lawsuit on Monday, Feb 14, and submitted it to Texas's Harrison County District Court. The lawsuit emphasized that Facebook never asked for consent when it implemented the photo-tagging feature from a few years back.
What is Facebook Photo-Tagging Feature
For reference, the Facebook photo-tagging feature is a tool that analyzes faces in uploaded photos. After gathering biometric identifiers like the shape of the face, eyes, and nose, the tool would scan for photos carrying the same face.
This tool was extremely handy for auto-tagging friends and families who have their own Facebook accounts. The tool is also useful for filtering photos of one person in a big photo album.
However, it should be emphasized that the technology used in photo-tagging is facial recognition. This implies that Facebook had analyzed and harvested the biometric data used by the feature. Note that since the feature analyzes all faces any photos uploaded on the social media platform, non-Facebook users also had their biometrics harvested.
Texas Sues Facebook: Abuse of Facial Recognition
According to the lawsuit, Facebook failed to get Texan's consent before gathering their facial data. This is seen as a violation of the state's consumer protection and biometric data privacy law.
The lawsuit said that Facebook "secretly forced millions of Texans into a facial-recognition scheme without their informed consent," per The Verge. So from 2010 to June 2011, "tens of millions of Texans who appeared in media uploaded to Facebook unsuspectingly had records of their facial geometry captured by Facebook."
The lawsuit further emphasized that the same issue might still apply to "other platforms or operations under its corporate umbrella, such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Reality Labs, or its upcoming virtual-reality metaverse."
According to CNN, the lawsuit demanded a $25,000 civil penalty on Meta per violation of the state's biometric law. The lawsuit also demanded $10,000 per violation of Texas consumer protection law. Note that the total estimated charges will easily amount to billions of dollars!
Meta and Facebook Respond to the Accusations
In a statement sent to The Verge, a representative of Meta responded that "these claims are without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously." Unfortunately, the representative did not elaborate on how they would fight back.
It is worth pointing out that Facebook already discontinued its photo-tagging feature in November 2021, after it settled a lawsuit in Illinois over the same issue. Facebook paid $650 million on its losses and said it will delete all the data it had collected at the time.
The situation between the Texas lawsuit and Meta is still progressing, so it is hard to determine which side the court will rule in favor of. For now, affected users are recommended to watch out for updates, which might drop anytime in the coming months.
