2024-08-05 12:01:54
“After working vigorously to obtain justice for citizens whose privacy rights were violated by Meta’s use of facial recognition software, I am proud to announce that we have achieved the most significant result ever in a lawsuit brought in a single country,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Tuesday, July 30.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has reached a historic $1.4 billion settlement with Meta. The agreement follows a 2022 lawsuit filed by Texas against Meta alleging that Meta collected and used biometric data from millions of Texas users without the authorization or consent required by the CUBI Act. This is the largest amount won in a single state action in history.
Meta launched a new feature in 2011, originally called “Tag Suggestions,” which it said would make it easier for users to “tag” photos with the names of people who appear in them. Meta automatically activated this feature for all Texans without explaining how it worked. For more than a decade, Meta had used facial recognition software on nearly every face in photos uploaded to Facebook, recording the facial shape of the person depicted.
In February 2022, Attorney General Paxton filed a lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that it illegally used facial recognition data on millions of Texas residents through its now-defunct photo tagging tool, Tag Suggestions.
According to Paxton, “Meta automatically enabled this feature for Texans without explaining how it worked. For more than a decade, Meta used facial recognition software on nearly every face in photos uploaded to Facebook, recording the facial geometry of the individuals depicted. Meta completed this action in light of CUBI’s prohibition on the company collecting biometric identifiers from Texans.”
Facebook analyzed the faces in the photos, including those of non-Facebook users.
The Capture or Use of Biometric Identifiers Act (CUBI) was enacted in 2009 to regulate the collection and use of biometric data for commercial purposes. It applies to all private entities in Texas, with the exception of voiceprint data maintained by financial institutions or their affiliates.
The legislation requires companies to notify data subjects and obtain their prior consent before collecting biometric data (iris or retina scans, fingerprints, voiceprints, records of hand or facial geometry) for business purposes.
Additionally, CUBI restricts the sale or disclosure of this data and requires that it be destroyed within a reasonable period of time, and the company only has one year to permanently delete the collected data once it has fulfilled its intended purpose.
As for Mehta, he reached an agreement with the state of Texas to prevent any fines, and stated that the agreement with the state of Texas includes no admission of any wrongdoing. A company spokesperson said: “We are pleased to have reached this agreement and are ready to intensify our investments in Texas, particularly through the development of data centers.”
This is the first lawsuit filed under the Texas law on the collection or use of biometric data, and the first settlement ever. The $1.4 billion settlement is the largest ever paid for a privacy and personal data breach in the world. It is also a warning to all companies that violate people’s privacy rights.
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