Facebook has been ordered by the court to pay compensation ranging from $200 to $400 to more than 1.5 million people, and this number may increase in the future. The compensation is the final result of a seven-year, $650million lawsuit filed in Illinois. Several Facebook features, including the "tag suggestion" feature, are alleged to have violated the state's biometric information privacy law.
The plaintiff's legal representative of the lawsuit said that Facebook stored its users' biometric data without giving users proper notice and obtaining consent. The data is used to support features that include facial recognition technology, including a suggestion that users upload photos of people who can be tagged.
The Illinois biometric information privacy act came into force in 2008, which is described by some law firms as providing the strongest protection for biometric data in the country. The Act provides for a number of rules relating to the collection and storage of biometric data, including consent requirements and disclosure rights. It also prohibits profiting from the collection and use of biometric data.
Full time and part-time Illinois residents who were created and stored "face templates" by Facebook after june7,2011 are considered to be part of the "collective" and are eligible to claim a partial settlement. Some Illinois residents have received cheques, and other members of the case should receive their cheques in the coming weeks. The deadline for filing claims as part of this settlement is november11,2020.
CNBC also stressed that similar lawsuits have been filed against Google photos and shutterfly in Illinois. The report also pointed out that the food chain pret a manger settled the lawsuit filed by its employees at a price of 677million US dollars. It is said that the fingerprints of these employees were stored by the company. Claim experts said that more privacy lawsuits were about to occur.
In addition to Illinois, Texas and Washington have similar privacy laws on biometric data, which may become the grounds for more lawsuits in the future. California, Colorado and Virginia will also enact strong data privacy laws in 2023.
However, Privacy Law Professor Matthew Kugler speculates that it may take some time for us to see litigation nationwide. In an interview with CNBC, he said that in the foreseeable future, litigation will be limited to the state level, because it may take some time to reach "any consensus" on federal legislation. Kugler did predict that the number of lawsuits at the state level would increase. "Now people know you can make money from it.".
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