Facebook loses facial recognition appeal, must face privacy class action

(This Aug. eight story has been refiled to right case quantity to 18-15982 as an alternative of 19-15982 in final paragraph)

By Jonathan Stempel

(Reuters) – A federal appeals courtroom on Thursday rejected Facebook Inc’s effort to undo a class action lawsuit claiming that it illegally collected and saved biometric knowledge for hundreds of thousands of customers with out their consent.

The 3-Zero resolution from the ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco over Facebook’s facial recognition expertise exposes the corporate to billions of {dollars} in potential damages to the Illinois customers who introduced the case.

It got here because the social media firm faces broad criticism from lawmakers and regulators over its privacy practices. Last month, Facebook agreed to pay a file $5 billion effective to settle a Federal Trade Commission knowledge privacy probe.

“This biometric data is so sensitive that if it is compromised, there is simply no recourse,” Shawn Williams, a lawyer for plaintiffs within the class action, mentioned in an interview. “It’s not like a Social Security card or credit card number where you can change the number. You can’t change your face.”

Facebook mentioned it plans to enchantment. “We have always disclosed our use of face recognition technology and that people can turn it on or off at any time,” a spokesman mentioned in an electronic mail.

Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc, gained the dismissal of an analogous lawsuit in Chicago final December.

The lawsuit started in 2015, when Illinois customers accused Facebook of violating that state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act in accumulating biometric knowledge.

Facebook allegedly achieved this by its “Tag Suggestions” characteristic, which allowed customers to acknowledge their Facebook buddies from beforehand uploaded photographs.

Writing for the appeals courtroom, Circuit Judge Sandra Ikuta mentioned the Illinois customers may sue as a gaggle, rejecting Facebook’s argument that their claims have been distinctive and required particular person lawsuits.

She additionally mentioned the 2008 Illinois regulation was meant to guard people’ “concrete interests in privacy,” and Facebook’s alleged unauthorized use of a face template “invades an individual’s private affairs and concrete interests.”

The courtroom returned the case to U.S. District Judge James Donato in San Francisco, who had licensed a class action in April 2018, for a doable trial.

Illinois’ biometric privacy regulation offers for damages of $1,000 for every negligent violation and $5,000 for every intentional or reckless violation.

Williams, a associate at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd, mentioned the class may embody 7 million Facebook customers.

The FTC probe arose from the invention that Facebook had let British consulting agency Cambridge Analytica harvest customers’ private info. Facebook’s $5 billion payout nonetheless requires U.S. Department of Justice approval.

The…