In the USA, a judge in a California federal court has approved a deal with Facebook: For violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, Facebook will pay about 1.6 million Illinois users compensation of about $340 each.
Collection of facial recognition data
The cause of action, initially brought by three people from Illinois, is the collection of facial recognition data without the consent of those affected. Facebook’s Tag Suggestions feature works by using automatic facial recognition to automatically suggest to users who upload photos with multiple people to tag certain people who are most likely to be the others pictured in each photo. What in most U.S. states can be carried out without the consent of the persons concerned is only legal in Illinois under certain conditions – these conditions include, above all, an explicit declaration of consent. The lawsuit filed was later converted to a class action and moved to federal court in California.
Strong Illinois Law
The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act is considered the strictest privacy law in the United States. It regulates the special status of biometric information. In addition to the explicitly required declaration of consent, the special protection that institutions and companies that collect biometric data must provide is also regulated. According to the law, this data includes fingerprints, voice recognition data, retina and iris scans, as well as data on hand and facial geometry – the latter of which includes the data collected and used by Facebook without being asked.
Seven million affected
In total, around seven million Illinois residents are said to be affected by the data collection. The class action lawsuit has been joined by a total of about 1.6 million of those affected. The relevant law provides for compensation of up to $1,000 in the case of an unintentional breach and up to $5,000 in the case of an intentional breach. If the case had been tried without a prior deal and Facebook had ultimately been convicted, the result could have been a fine of 35 billion US dollars. With the deal that has now been struck, which Facebook had been seeking for some time, the payment due could be significantly reduced; Judge James Donato nevertheless sees the settlement as a success: “This is money coming directly out of Facebook’s own pocket,” Donato stated. In fact, the amount due to each and every affected party is extremely high for a U.S. class action. Usually, those affected receive minimal amounts at best. Donato had rejected previous settlement offers from Facebook. The difference between the total amount of 650 million US dollars will go to the law firms that represented the victims in the class action.
Proceedings against Clearview AI
The controversial company Clearview AI, which built a large database of photos and fed them to facial recognition systems without the knowledge of the data subjects as well as without the knowledge of the companies whose data it accessed, has also been sued for violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. Negotiations and decisions are still pending here.
