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Facebook To Face $35 Billion Class-Action Lawsuit Over Misuse of Facial Recognition Data (firstpost.com) 23

Posted by BeauHD from the get-your-popcorn dept.
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.
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Facebook To Face $35 Billion Class-Action Lawsuit Over Misuse of Facial Recognition Data More

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

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  • Umm hmm. (Score:3)

    by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Tuesday October 22, 2019 @10:35PM (#59337784)
    Wake me up if the final judgment is more than 5 cents per person.

    • 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

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

    That's the largest lawsuit I can remember.

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

  • 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?
    • "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: (Score:2)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        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.
  • Illinois collects around $39 billion from all taxes per year.

  • 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.

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

    Privacy is a right in most sane places.

  • 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
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