The lawsuit will move forward under an IL law – the Biometric Information Privacy Act – which requires companies to seek prior consent from their users for collecting and storing biometric data, including “faceprints”.
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The plaintiffs assert that their privacy rights were violated by Facebook when the company’s facial recognition technology was used to identify them in images uploaded to the social media platform without their consent.
“If California law is applied, the IL policy of protecting its citizens” privacy interests in their biometric data, especially in the context of dealing with “major national corporations’ like Facebook, would be written out of existence”, the judge said in his Thursday opinion in the San Francisco case.
California District Judge James Donato denied Facebook’s request to dismiss the case, and it is set to continue. It must be noted that Facebook has not made a public comment regarding its position on the matter. The plaintiffs in this case say they never gave permission to Facebook to use their faces as biometric identifiers.
Facebook was also hit with a lawsuit over its plan to issue new stock last month.
California is Facebook’s venue of choice because a provision in the company’s user agreement asserts that it is protected by the said state’s choice-of-law clause, which specifically bars users from using IL statutes to sue.
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The leading social network had modified its terms of service to state that California law applies, but timing and circumstances permit the application of the IL act in the suit, the 24-page ruling said. A case against facial recognition technology on the grounds of privacy isn’t without precedent. Google faced a similar lawsuit in March for its Google Photos tagging feature. Click this link for more information on how to change your Facebook privacy settings.
