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Facebook might be fined billions after losing facial recognition lawsuit

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Geekz Snow
Facebook might be fined billions after losing facial recognition lawsuit

Facebook — inarguably the world’s largest facial database — has a lost a federal appeal in a class-action lawsuit that claimed it illegally collected and stored biometric data of millions of users without their consent.

The lawsuit began in 2015 when Illinois-based Facebook users sued the company for violating the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), which mandates that companies develop a public “written policy” before such data is collected and stored, and establish a retention schedule after which the said biometric identifiers will be destroyed.

Facebook’s contravention stems from its “Tag Suggestions” feature that lets you automatically tag your friends in photos uploaded to the service.

The technology analyzes the details of people’s faces in the photos — the distance between their eyes, their nose, and other features — to create a face template that can be used to identify them in other photos.

The plaintiffs argued the company’s facial recognition feature failed to meet the requirements of the law.

In a 3-0 decision, the 9th U.S.

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Geekz Snow
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