Texas announced a massive settlement with Meta over facebook's use of facial recognition, resolving facebook-using-unauthorized-biometric-data”>a lawsuit filed in 2022 State Attorney General Ken Paxton's office said today that Meta has agreed to pay $1.4 billion over five years to settle the lawsuit, alleging that the tagging suggestions on photos uploaded to facebook violated the Capture or Use of Biometric Identifiers (CUBI) Act and the Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
According to Paxton, this is the largest settlement ever reached in a lawsuit brought by a single state. It is also the first lawsuit and settlement under CUBI and serves as a warning to other companies that violate state privacy rights, he says.
“Any abuse of Texans' sensitive data will be met with the full force of the law,” Paxton said in a statement. Press release.
At stake are facebook's suggestions for tagging people in photos. technology/09facebook.html#:~:text=BRUSSELS%20(Bloomberg%20News)%20%E2%80%94%20European,it%20planned%20to%20file%20a”>2011Meta launched a new feature, initially called Tag Suggestions, which it claimed would improve the user experience by making it easier for users to “tag” photos with the names of the people in the photo,” according to the press release.
That was two years after Texas passed the CUBI Lawwhich prohibits companies from capturing biometric data such as facial geometry without receiving prior informed consent. facebook automatically triggered labeling suggestions, “capturing and using the personal biometric data of millions of Texans without the authorization required by law,” the attorney general’s office says.
The lawsuit initially sought $25,000 in civil penalties for each CUBI violation plus an additional $10,000 for each violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. The edge It was previously reported that such sanctions could have reached hundreds of billions of dollars, Wall Street Journal reported in 2022.
“We are pleased to resolve this matter and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potential data center development,” Meta spokesman Christopher Sgro said in an email.
