Wasn’t following this closely.
Facebook’s parent company Meta will pay Texas $1.4 billion to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of using personal biometric data without users’ authorization.
The 2022 lawsuit, filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in state court, alleged that Meta had been using facial recognition software on photos uploaded to Facebook without Texans’ consent. Paxton announced the settlement on Tuesday.
Paxton’s office said this is the largest settlement ever obtained by a single state, and the largest settlement related to privacy a state attorney general has ever secured. The settlement will be paid over five years.
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This was the first lawsuit Paxton’s office argued under a 2009 state law that protects Texans’ biometric data, like fingerprints and facial scans. The law requires businesses to inform and get consent from individuals before collecting such data. It also limits sharing this data, except in certain cases like helping law enforcement or completing financial transactions. Businesses must protect this data and destroy it within a year after it’s no longer needed.
In 2011, Meta introduced a feature known as Tag Suggestions to make it easier for users to tag people in their photos. According to Paxton’s office, the feature was turned on by default and ran facial recognition on users’ photos, automatically capturing data protected by the 2009 law. That system was discontinued in 2021, with Meta saying it deleted over 1 billion people’s individual facial recognition data.
I vaguely remember hearing about this when it was filed, but didn’t pay much attention to it beyond that. The settlement will be paid out over five years, and it looks like the money will go into general revenue. I don’t see anything to suggest that Facebook users or some other subset of the public will get a piece of it. If I’m wrong about that, I assume there will be followup stories. Texas Public Radio has more.