Facebook may pay billions of dollars because of facial recognition

Facebook may pay billions of dollars because of facial recognition

Facebook lost a federal appeal in a lawsuit over face recognition data, putting the company in the face of massive compensation payments because of its privacy practices.

 

A federal appeals court rejected Facebook’s efforts to undo a class action claiming to have illegally collected and stored biometric data for millions of users without their consent.

 

Facebook was sued in 2015 under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, which requires companies to develop a policy before collecting and storing vital data, including face scanning, and determining how data is stored.

 

The company used this technology in the feature (Tag Suggestions), which determines whether the picture includes friends of the user.

 

Prosecutors filed a claim on the grounds that Facebook had failed to meet the requirements of the law, and Facebook appealed when a court of the first instance ratified the case as a class action.

 

Facebook said: The plaintiffs failed to show concrete injuries, and that the Court of First Instance exceeded its authority by ratifying it as a class action.

 

The San Francisco Court of Appeal’s decision on face recognition technology on Facebook offers the company billions of dollars in potential compensation to Illinois users who have filed the case.

 

Illinois law allows for $ 1,000 for each violation for negligence or $ 5,000 for each willful violation.

 

Compensation relates to the severity of the violation, and the lawsuit may involve millions of Facebook users, which means the company may one day have to pay billions of dollars in damages if the case is completely lost.

 

A spokesman for Facebook said in a statement: We intend to seek further review of the decision, and we have always revealed our use of face recognition technology and that people can turn it on or off at any time.

 

The company is seeking further review from the full court of appeal, according to the spokesperson, and can file the case with the Supreme Court.

 

The civil liberties groups upheld the lawsuit, said Nathan Freed Wessler, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) team in a statement: This decision is a strong recognition of the risks of unrestricted use of face-control technology.

 

The case comes as the social media company faces widespread criticism from lawmakers and regulators over privacy practices, and last month agreed to pay a record $ 5 billion fine to settle data privacy with the Federal Trade Commission