A US Appeals Court gave the green light to a class-action lawsuit over Facebook’s photo-tagging suggestions. Facebook users now have the green light to sue the company over its use of facial recognition tech. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor 3-0 after Facebook tried to block a class-action lawsuit which claims it illegally captured and stored millions of users’ biometric data without their consent.
“The facial-recognition technology at issue here can obtain information that is ‘detailed, encyclopedic, and effortlessly compiled,’ which would be almost impossible without such technology,” wrote Judge Sandra Ikuta.
Collecting such information without consent violates the California Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). It is alleged that a Facebook photo feature uses stored facial information to make tagging suggestions to users of friends that may appear in their uploaded photos.
Penalties for BIPA violations range from $1,000 for each negligent breach to $5,000 for reckless or willful acts. Reuters notes, plaintiff attorney Shawn Williams indicated that the affected class might include as many as seven million users. If found guilty Facebook could face billions of dollars in damages.
Facebook claimed that the plaintiffs’ claims against the company were unique and as such they should be required to file lawsuits individually. The appeals court rejected that assertion, allowing the class-action suit to proceed. Judge Ikuta wrote that the intention of BIPA was to protect people’s “concrete interests in privacy” and by allegedly using biometric data to create a face template for its users, Facebook “[invaded] an individual’s private affairs and concrete interests.”
Facebook’s assurances rang hollow, however, thanks to its numerous and recent run-ins with user privacy issues. Despite that tagging suggestions seem to be a perfectly harmless application of the technology, organizations like the ACLU applauded the ruling.
“The capability to instantaneously identify and track people based on their faces raises chilling potential for privacy violations at an unprecedented scale,” said ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler in a statement. “Both corporations and the government are now on notice that this technology poses unique risks to people’s privacy and safety.”
