Texas Sues Meta Over Facebook's Facial-Recognition Practices (wsj.com) 17
The Texas attorney general filed a suit against Facebook parent Meta Platforms on Monday, charging that the social-media giant's longstanding and now discontinued use of facial-recognition technology violated that state's privacy protections for personal biometric data. From a report: The lawsuit, filed in state district court in Marshall by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, seeks civil penalties in the hundreds of billions of dollars, according to a person familiar with the matter. In a statement, Mr. Paxton said the company's capture of facial geometry in photographs that users uploaded from 2010 to late last year resulted in "tens of millions of violations" of Texas law.
"Facebook has been secretly harvesting Texans' most personal information -- photos and videos -- for its own corporate profit," Mr. Paxton said. "Texas law has prohibited such harvesting without informed consent for over 20 years. While ordinary Texans have been using Facebook to innocently share photos of loved ones with friends and family, we now know that Facebook has been brazenly ignoring Texas law for the last decade."
"Facebook has been secretly harvesting Texans' most personal information -- photos and videos -- for its own corporate profit," Mr. Paxton said. "Texas law has prohibited such harvesting without informed consent for over 20 years. While ordinary Texans have been using Facebook to innocently share photos of loved ones with friends and family, we now know that Facebook has been brazenly ignoring Texas law for the last decade."
With Pinky in Mouth (Score:2)
I'm glad that they're trying to get remuneration greater than something the CEO can find in the couch cushions, but hundreds of billions of dollars for a state violation? I hope he had his pinky in his mouth when he announced it.
Are EULAs not informed consent? Did Facebook/Meta fail to put their facial-recognition practices into their EULA?
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Any part of an EULA that's against the law is.. Well. Against the law. It doesn't matter at all if you agreed to it or not.
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Sure. But the law says "without informed consent" (it's in TFS). So, the question is going to be, were users informed.
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And that's pretty much what these lawsuits are about.
If they hid it somewhere in the EULA, is it 'informed consent'. If they didn't even try hiding it in the EULA, then it can never be informed consent.
We'll see how all this ends up. The US is somewhat different to for example the EU in expectation of privacy, though, so this should be interesting to watch!
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Ken's just angry that the FB facial-recognition software always matches any Texan with this guy [wikipedia.org] ... :-)
Re: With Pinky in Mouth (Score:4, Insightful)
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This!
A mod point to you, if I had one.
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Non-paywall alternative (Score:1)
People really need to stop posting articles that aren't behind soft or hard paywalls and people need to stop green-lighting these bad posts. You can't yell at people that they didn't RTFA if they couldn't.
Can't help but think (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just more political theater. As the Texas AG himself pointed out, it's been going on for over a decade, and the law has been on the books for 20-years, but it's only recently that targeting "woke liberal big tech" companies has been a sign of being a "true" Republican. Where was this lawsuit before Trump and other right-wing nutjobs were getting booted off Twitter and other social media platforms?
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And do you know how hard you have to work to get yourself kicked off twitter and facebook?
Numerous studies show there is no left bias at either company, in fact both have a bias for the right:
https://www.theguardian.com/me... [theguardian.com]
Oh, THAT crook? (Score:2)
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Ken "Securities Fraud Felon" Paxton's lobs nonsensical lawsuits around every time he needs a distraction from his crimes getting news coverage [msnbc.com].
Whoa whoa whoa, MSNBC is so biased, we need the Fox News take, you know, for both sides.
https://www.fox4news.com/news/... [fox4news.com]
Fox News is too MSM, or that's what people say, maybe we should check in with one of his peers, Congressman Louie Gohmert, [R] Texas
https://gohmert.com/ [gohmert.com]
"Why Louie is Running for Attorney General
With Ken Paxton under indictment for securities fraud and facing a federal investigation for bribery and corruption[1,2], Louie Gohmert is running to save Texas and restore honesty and integrity to
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Isn't Gomer that fucktard that...
Hey, he's one of Ken Paxton's peers, all I'm saying.