Judge says facial recognition suit against Facebook can proceed

A judge has refused to throw out a lawsuit alleging that Facebook collects and stores data from pictures of its users’ faces.

The case concerns the social network’s “tag suggestions” feature, which scans the faces in a photo and suggests possible identities for people in the image.

{mosads}The plaintiffs in the case, which is being argued in California, allege that Facebook illegally scanned and stored their facial information. They are citing an Illinois privacy law, the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), to bring the case.

“The Court accepts as true plaintiffs’ allegations that Facebook’s face recognition technology involves a scan of face geometry that was done without plaintiffs’ consent,” wrote Judge James Donato in a ruling issued Thursday. “Consequently, they have stated a plausible claim for relief under [the Illinois law].”

But Donato said many other questions could affect the case.

“As the facts develop, it may be that ‘scan’ and ‘photograph’ with respect to Facebook’s practices take on technological dimensions that might affect the BIPA claims,” he said. “Other fact issues may also inform the application of BIPA. But those are questions for another day.”

The plaintiffs are Illinois residents, but Facebook had claimed that a provision in its user agreement requiring cases against the company be heard under California law meant that they could not sue under the law. The judge disagreed and said the Illinois law could still be used.

“Consequently, the Court declines to enforce the California choice-of-law provision and will apply Illinois law,” Donato said.

A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment on the ruling.

The company’s tag-suggestions feature has been in place for years, but visual recognition by software remains an area of interest for the company. It recently rolled out a feature that scans photographs and produces data that blind people can read to tell them more about what’s in the photo. That effort has attracted interest from CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who spoke with an engineer working on the project on a live stream last month.

The case also involves how companies implement artificial intelligence, a major area of business growth in Silicon Valley.

— This story was updated at 12:05 p.m.