On June 14, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment in favor of Facebook, holding that the company did not violate the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”) (740 ICLS ¶¶ 15, 20).

The appeal concerned a photograph that had been uploaded to a Facebook organizational page of a local news service, not an individual Facebook user’s page. The appellant claimed that Facebook had subjected the photograph to facial recognition technology to capture biometric data without the appellant’s consent.

The Ninth Circuit’s brief memorandum opinion turned on the summary judgment evidence.  Based on that evidence, “[n]o reasonable jury could conclude that Facebook” had violated the Illinois privacy law. Facebook employee declarations and internal emails showed that facial recognition was not enabled for the organizational page when the photograph was uploaded.  Specific evidence also demonstrated that facial recognition was not applied to the solitary photograph at issue. The court further discounted as irrelevant appellant’s evidence that all photographs uploaded by individual Facebook users were subject to facial recognition because the contested photograph was uploaded to an organizational page, not a user page.

Read More...

Related Articles:

A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit that alleged Google’s nonconsensual use of facial recognition technology violated users’ privacy rights, allowing the tech giant to continue to scan and store their biometric data.

A class-action lawsuit has been filed in Illinois against fast food restaurant chain Wendy's accusing the company of breaking state laws in regards to the way it stores and handles employee fingerprints.

Lead plaintiff Carlo Licata claims Facebook began violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy act of 2008 in 2010, in a “purported attempt to make the process of tagging friends easier.”

Facebook violated its users’ privacy to acquire the largest privately held stash of biometric face-recognition data in the world, a class action claims in Chancery Court. Lead plaintiff Carlo Licata claims Facebook began violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy act of 2008 in 2010, in a “purported attempt to make the process of tagging friends easier.”