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Federal Court Rules Facebook Users Can Sue Company Over Unlawful use of Face Recognition Technology:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled today that Facebook users can sue the company over its use of face recognition technology. The ruling is the first decision of an American appellate court directly addressing the unique privacy harms posed by the face recognition technology being increasingly pushed on members of the public without their knowledge and consent.
The ruling in Patel v. Facebook affirms the district court's certification of a class of Facebook users in Illinois who have alleged that the company violated their rights under their state's Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The Illinois statute imposes protections against companies collecting and storing biometric information, including using face recognition technology, without the user's knowledge and consent. The suit alleges that Facebook's practice of using face recognition technology to identify users in digital images uploaded to the site without disclosing its use of face recognition or obtaining consent violates state law.
"This decision is a strong recognition of the dangers of unfettered use of face surveillance technology," said Nathan Freed Wessler, staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. "The capability to instantaneously identify and track people based on their faces raises chilling potential for privacy violations at an unprecedented scale. Both corporations and the government are now on notice that this technology poses unique risks to people's privacy and safety."
Today's ruling allows the case to move forward as a class action in district court. In an opinion by Judge Ikuta, the court "concludes that the development of a face template using facial-recognition technology without consent (as alleged here) invades an individual's private affairs and concrete interests." As the court explained, "the facial-recognition technology at issue here can obtain information that is 'detailed, encyclopedic, and effortlessly compiled,' which would be almost impossible without such technology." In light of these harms, the court found that the plaintiffs had alleged sufficient privacy injuries to have standing to sue.
"BIPA's innovative protections for biometric information are now enforceable in federal court," added Rebecca Glenberg, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Illinois. "If a corporation violates a statute by taking your personal information without your consent, you do not have to wait until your data is stolen or misused to go to court. As our General Assembly understood when it enacted BIPA, a strong enforcement mechanism is crucial to hold companies accountable when they violate our privacy laws. Corporations that misuse Illinoisans sensitive biometric data now do so at their own peril."
The ruling can be found online here: https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/patel-v-facebook-opinion
Before getting your hopes up too much, be aware that the this suit still needs to go to trial and only pertains to Facebook users in Illinois. That said, it is a shot across the bow for digital privacy.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 09 2019, @01:44PM (4 children)
If we can sue Facebook for using FRT with a click-wrap license that we explicitly acknowledged consent with, how about merchants who use it at checkout, or store entry, or on the public sidewalks outside the stores? Private home owners whose cameras scan delivery people at the door, or outside their property altogether. How about law enforcement and their plate scanning cameras, TSA, etc.?
Seems like the essential question is: is Facebook a public space, or a private one?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rigrig on Friday August 09 2019, @02:42PM
You can pretty much sue anybody you want for anything, doesn't mean you'll win though...
This ruling only established that Illinois law states that storing your face template is an harmful invasion on your privacy, so you can sue that even if no other damage was done.
In Illinois, if they store your face template, they would probably be in violation of this law.
Do these things come with FRT though? Because just recording a bunch of footage is not biometric data.
License plates are definitely not biometrics. They specifically made this law to grant extra protection to biometrics because you are stuck with the same set for the rest of your life.
I imagine they got some kind of exemption because of terrorists.
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 5, Informative) by fyngyrz on Friday August 09 2019, @03:01PM
It seems to me that the essential questions are, is it okay to look into people's lives without their consent? And if it is okay, for whom is it okay, and under what conditions?
For instance, many will argue that it's only okay for the government to do it if they have a warrant, with the idea that general privacy [fyngyrz.com] is protected by 4th amendment [cornell.edu] restrictions on government search and seizure.
The general practice at this point is that government, private individuals and corporations have been able to look into, and keep records of, anything they like. It is only recently that there has been a (slight, TBH) counter-reaction to people's supposedly private information — much of it acquired without their consent and sometimes directly against their best interests — being available to any curious party.
Also, there are some truly idiotic mis-interpretations of the 4th amendment [cornell.edu] that have infected the judicial view of what the 4th amendment [cornell.edu] actually means as far as the government goes, specifically due to using word "unreasonable" as a magic lever able to nullify every other word in the amendment as well as its profoundly obvious intent.
The issue of our privacy [fyngyrz.com] being something we control stands diametrically opposed to people in general's urge to gossip and play with their (usually at least somewhat) metaphorical pitchforks and torches, as well as the now-obvious corporate ability to turn collections of information almost directly into income.
I think this is an important issue to look at, and hopefully, settle clearly. Personally, I lean pretty hard on the privacy [fyngyrz.com] side of the scale.
--
Don't use "beefstew" as a password.
It's not stroganoff.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @04:20AM
Facebook has shadow profiles of people who never allowed themselves to be used by this disservice, so no, not everyone "consented" to this abuse.
I also don't think it's real consent anyway, because the average person has no idea how dangerous [gnu.org] mass surveillance - whether done by corporations or governments - really is, both to individual liberty and to democracy itself.
All forms of mass surveillance should be banned, whether it's done by private or public entities. The types of data that corporations and governments can collect and store need to be massively reduced, as well as the length of time that they can store the data. If there's no useful data, then they can't do mass surveillance, whether now or in the future.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @10:11AM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @02:06PM (2 children)
The next thing hopefully will be Amazon's ring doorbell cameras and how they just give police access to the home security system cameras, and how they offer advice to police departments to convince homeowners to consent to this to make the legal issues go away.
facial recognition and being tagged/tracked as one walks the dog around the block is certainly an abuse of something. i recognize that one has no expectation of privacy in public, but geotagging and tracking with facial recognition seems to be outside the expectation of what a lack of privacy entails--that's downright creepy that cops can do that and the product is marketed based on fear and access sold to cops based on convenience.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 09 2019, @02:50PM (1 child)
I call it stalking, it has the correct creepy jive to it. Also I think you can get convicted for that while taking all actions in public space. For example, try stalking a cop, politician, judge, ... for a few days, only in public space mind you. Be sure to take pictures, notes, videos.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday August 09 2019, @03:48PM
The paparazzi do it all the time. In America, there is a big hole that gets opened up in your right to privacy if you are a "person of public interest". That includes celebrities, as well as any elected officials or spokespersons, and arguably also agents of the government like cops and judges. I think. IANAL.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday August 09 2019, @02:07PM (1 child)
Can i sue them too, even though i don't use Facebook?
Classy-action, here i comes!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday August 09 2019, @03:45PM
Considering that they use their facial recognition tech on everybody, probably yes. Assuming you live in Illinois, since this is an Illinois law.
Not sure what that has to do with the hashtag, though.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday August 09 2019, @02:38PM (2 children)
1. Facebook will amend their privacy practices to explicitly allow collection of fact and other biometric data in a document that 99.997% of people do not care about and will not read.
2. You will be required to check a box and click a button that you have received notice of the change.
3. Facebook will settle the suit.
4. Some lawyers will get a payoff in the form of lawyer's expenses. The lottery winner (lead plaintiff) will share in that payoff a bit. Most users harmed will not receive any meaningful compensation.
5. Facebook will vigorously change their policies about creation of new features needing to be checked for privacy implications. The privacy department at Facebook will receive one .25 FTE and the department will have to review changes for privacy implications. This will change nothing to the end user and won't really change anything about the development process and if that department falls behind they'll just ignore the rule.
6. Nothing will noticeably change except some lawyers made some income because legal compliance didn't catch this change ahead of time.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2019, @10:15AM
1. Find out how many of my friends uploaded pictures containing my face without my knowledge
2. Sue Facebook for processing my face even though I never created a FB profile
3. Profit?
(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Saturday August 10 2019, @12:42PM
That's a worthwhile outcome. Sue them guys!