Hammad Khalid
In a lawsuit, the state claims that the social media giant violated privacy protections and seeks hundreds of billions of dollars in civil penalties.
On Monday, the Texas Attorney General’s Office filed a lawsuit against Meta’s Facebook, alleging that the social media company violated state privacy laws by using facial-recognition technology that collected biometric data from millions of Texans without their consent.
The lawsuit accuses Facebook of seizing biometric information from photos and videos uploaded by users without their consent, disclosing the information to others, and failing to destroy it within a reasonable time frame.
“This is yet another example of Big Tech’s deceitful business practices, and it must stop. I will continue to fight for Texans’ privacy and security,”
Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the lawsuit, stating a person familiar with the matter as saying that the state was seeking hundreds of billions of dollars in civil penalties.
“These claims are without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously.”
A Meta spokesperson said
In November, the company announced the shutdown of a facial recognition system and the deletion of more than a billion people’s data in a blog post. It cited concerns about the technology’s use and uncertainty about the rules governing its use. It also agreed to pay $650 million in 2020 to settle a state lawsuit in Illinois over similar issues.
However, According to the new lawsuit, which was filed in a Texas state court in Marshall, 20.5 million Texans have a Facebook account.
“The scope of Facebook’s misconduct is staggering,” the lawsuit said. “Facebook repeatedly captured Texans’ biometric identifiers without consent not hundreds, or thousands, or millions of times — but billions of times,” the lawsuit said.
Reuters reported
Since the declaration of Meta’s new name, the company has been in serious trouble. A few days ago, the company has faced $3.2 billion UK class action due to market dominance and now this one arises.
