Facebook To Face $35 Billion Class-Action Lawsuit Over Misuse of Facial Recognition Data

A federal court has reportedly said that Facebook will have to face a class-action lawsuit for allegedly misusing users' facial recognition data in Illinois. The lawsuit could cost the company up to $35 billion. Firstpost reports: Facebook has been trying to avoid the lawsuit for a few years now. The lawsuit began in 2015 when Illinois users accused Facebook of violating that state's Biometric Information Privacy Act in collecting biometric data. The U.S. court, however, has denied Facebook's request for an en banc hearing before the full slate of ninth circuit judges that could have halted the case. Now the case will go to trial unless the Supreme Court intercedes.

Facebook allegedly accomplished the said misuse of facial recognition data through its 'Tag Suggestions' feature, which allowed users to recognize their Facebook friends from previously uploaded photos. The suit alleges that Illinois citizens didn't consent to having their uploaded photos scanned with facial recognition and weren't informed of how long the data would be saved when the mapping started in 2011. According to the report, Facebook could face $1,000 to $5,000 in penalties per user for 7 million people, which could sum to a maximum of $35 billion.

Umm hmm.

[burtosis]

Wake me up if the final judgment is more than 5 cents per person.

Re:

[Snarf You]

Dear Class Action Lawsuit Member:

In accordance with a recent court ruling, please find the enclosed voucher for 0.10 Libra.

The voucher must be redeemed from your FaceBook account within 14 days from the date of this letter.

Thank you for your continued use of FaceBook.

Yours truly,
Mark Zuckerberg

Wow! $35 Billion.

[Futurepower(R)]

"Facebook To Face $35 Billion Class-Action Lawsuit..."

That's the largest lawsuit I can remember.

Tobacco Litigation Settlement Agreement

[thesjaakspoiler]

The Tobacco Litigation Settlement Agreement was settled for $208 billion in 1998.
And we'll still have to wait for a judge to award such a amount.
Usually it ends up being a few million, the amount of money Facebook is spending on their latte's for their empolyees per day.

Voyeur Zuck

[Tough Love]

Zuckerberg is an unrepentant recidivist voyeur, is there a shred of doubt remaining about that?

Re:Serial killer Zuck

[wolfheart111]

He has all the hallmarks of one... a predator, psychopath and killer.

Europe: Check out this fine! USA: That's not ...

[Qbertino]

... a fine. *This* is a fine!

Who owns the images?

[AHuxley]

Does the person uploading and sharing the image own the image?
Did social media not get full control over every image on upload?
Is/was social media now the owner and publisher of all images?

Re:

[Dru Nemeton]

"You bet," on all accounts!

I remember way back when FB generated a shitstorm with their user base by changing the TOS and allowing themselves fully unfettered ownership of any photos the user uploaded without compensation for eternity.

Re:

[AHuxley]

Did the user hand over all images uploaded as part of the "free" social media experience?
If so thats now the social media image set.

Fun fact

[slashmydots]

Illinois collects around $39 billion from all taxes per year.

Law

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Funny. In science fiction prognostications, I can recall many instances where new tech is misused by government, or brings wonders to the people. I don't remember many about lawsuits.

But those were happy worlds, or warning worlds, not worlds by and for the lawyers.

Also a violation of Washington St Constitution

[WillAffleckUW]

Not to mention violation of any Canadian friends or EU friends included.

Privacy is a right in most sane places.

I don't understand.

[BitterOak]

I know this won't be a popular opinion here, and personally, I don't like Facebook and don't have a Facebook page, but I really have trouble understanding the basis for this suit. Apparently there is a law in Illinois which forbids the collection of biometric data without consent and they are accused of violating said law by using facial recognition. But if someone uploads a photo to Facebook, aren't they implicitly giving permission to Facebook to store that photo? It would seem to me this law is meant

Re:

[BitterOak]

They collected identification information from 'friends' of those in the photos. ie. Those in the photos and being identified did not consent.

But in that case, isn't it the friend who uploaded the photo and not Facebook who is at fault?

Problem

[TammyGuido]

If you feel like your brain is melting under the crush of books, classes, and papers, don’t freak out. It's good that I have free time because I entrusted my homework in economics to a special service https://ca.edubirdie.com/econo... [edubirdie.com] because I have some problems in college.