I'd like to give a big Spritzler thumbs up for the State of Texas.
Meta will pay $1.4 billion to settle facial-recognition tech case
Texas sued Meta over violating the state's privacy protections with its facial-recognition technology
By Britney Nguyen, Quartz Media
PublishedYesterday
Meta has reached a settlement to pay the state of Texas $1.4 billion over the use of its facial recognition-technology, which the state said violated its privacy protections.
The tech giant will have to pay the settlement, “the largest ever obtained from an action brought by a single State,” over a five year period, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said.
A Meta spokesperson said in a statement shared with Quartz that the company is “pleased to resolve this matter, and look[s] forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potentially developing data centers.” Meta did not admit to any wrongdoing in the settlement.
The Texas attorney general’s office filed a lawsuit against Facebook, now Meta, over the technology in February 2022, alleging that the facial-recognition technology had captured and used biometric data of millions of Texans without their consent, therefore violating the state’s privacy protections. Facebook, the attorney general’s office alleged, was storing biometric identifiers, defined as “a retina or iris scan, fingerprint, voiceprint, or record of hand or face geometry” from photos and videos uploaded to the platform.
“Facebook will no longer take advantage of people and their children with the intent to turn a profit at the expense of one’s safety and well-being,” Paxton said at the time. “This is yet another example of Big Tech’s deceitful business practices and it must stop. I will continue to fight for Texans’ privacy and security.”
Meta shut down its facial-recognition software in November 2021 after using it for a decade. The company said it would delete the entirety of the data, which was used to identify people in photos, for one billion of its users over concerns it was being misused by governments and other entities.
“There are many concerns about the place of facial recognition technology in society, and regulators are still in the process of providing a clear set of rules governing its use,” Jerome Pesenti, former vice president of artificial intelligence at Meta, said in a statement at the time.
In 2019, Facebook reached a $5 billion privacy settlement with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission over the use of facial-recognition technology. And in 2021, the company paid the state of Illinois $650 million for violating a biometric privacy law.
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