Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued Facebook parent company Meta. He is accused of having illegally collected facial recognition data without the explicit consent of users. A charge that falls very badly for the company, which is trying somehow to restore its image.
Collection of biometric data considered illegal
The complaint targets Meta’s practices from 2010 until the end of 2021, during which time Mark Zuckerberg’s firm allegedly captured and repeatedly marketed biometric data in photos and videos for more than a decade, without the informed consent of users. It would also have shared this information with third parties, and would not have destroyed it within a reasonable time.
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” Facebook secretly collected Texans’ most personal information, photos and videos, for its own benefit. Texas law has prohibited such collection without informed consent for more than 20 years. While ordinary Texans have used Facebook to innocently share photos of their loved ones with friends and family, we now know that Facebook has brazenly ignored Texas law for the past decade. said Ken Paxton.
In 2019, Meta announced the end of default facial recognition on the Facebook social network, which allowed the system to automatically recognize the person posted in a photo or video on the social network. At the end of 2021, the company went even further by simply forgoing facial recognition and explaining that it was going to delete the facial recognition data of more than a billion users.
This announcement is mixed for the Texas authorities, who ensure in their complaint that ” Facebook has made no such commitments with respect to other platforms or operations under its company, such as Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Reality Labs, or its upcoming virtual reality metaverse. “. Furthermore, the document states that Meta has obtained patents for systems ” in which consumers walking through stores or standing at checkouts have their faces scanned and matched to their social media profile “, which suggests that the company is not completely done with facial recognition.
For a long time, the Facebook social network automatically recognized people posted in a photo or video. Photography: Austin Distel / Unsplash
Texas has its own law to fight facial recognition
This Texas-led lawsuit is very reminiscent of a similar lawsuit in the state of Illinois, for which Meta was ultimately ordered to pay $550 million. He was also accused of having collected biometric data from users without their consent, a violation of a law in force in the midwestern state.
Indeed, there is not yet a US federal law that legislates on the protection of privacy, but some states have their own text, like Illinois and Texas, which introduced its legislation in 2009, which explains why the complaint against Meta targets its practices since 2010. The latter makes it illegal to collect biometric data from people without their informed consent and prohibits their sharing.
For his part, Meta explains that “ these allegations are baseless “, and promises to ” vigorously defend “.
huge penalties
In this case, the State of Texas expects to obtain ” billions of dollars in damages » ; the authorities estimate that 20 million Texans are involved in the case, and want each violation to result in penalties of 25,000 dollars.
” Facebook will no longer take advantage of people and their children with the intent to make profit at the expense of everyone’s safety and well-being. This is yet another example of deceptive big tech business practices, and it needs to stop. I will continue to fight for the privacy and safety of Texans says Ken Paxton.
As a reminder, Meta was fined a record $5 billion in 2019 by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for its role in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The company is also indicted, once again by the FTC, for abuse of dominant position, and could eventually be forced to separate from Instagram and WhatsApp.
The scale of the fines sought by Texas authorities demonstrates the impact that increasingly widespread privacy laws could have on the operations of tech giants, which are now subject to far stricter regulations than in the decade that has just ended.