Breaking Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton posted a press release to X on the success of a settlement with Meta over its “unauthorized capture of personal biometric data” of millions of Texans.
“We have secured a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta to stop the company’s practice of capturing and using the personal biometric data of millions of Texans without the authorization required by law” the Attorney General’s post reads, accompanying the press release. “This settlement is the largest ever obtained from an action brought by a single State and the largest privacy settlement an Attorney General has ever obtained. This serves as a warning to any companies engaged in practices that violate Texans’ privacy rights.”
https://twitter.com/kenpaxtontx/status/1818284641587257574?s=42&t=XbTlOeAo2IlxtW93MRjFLQ
Paxton’s release explains:
In 2011, Meta rolled out a new feature, initially called Tag Suggestions, that it claimed would improve the user experience by making it easier for users to ‘tag’ photographs with the names of people in the photo. Meta automatically turned this feature on for all Texans without explaining how the feature worked. Unbeknownst to Texans, for more than a decade Meta ran facial recognition software on virtually every face contained in the photographs uploaded to Facebook, capturing records of the facial geometry of the people depicted. Meta did this despite knowing the CUBI forbids companies from capturing biometric identifiers of Texans, including records of face geometry, unless the business first informs the person and receives their consent to capture the biometric identifier.”
Paxton’s release states that “After vigorously pursuing justice for our citizens whose privacy rights were violated” Meta “will pay the state of Texas $1.4 billion over five years.”