Texas reached a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta on Tuesday over its use of facial recognition scans, according to a press release.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Meta in February 2022 for allegedly storing facial recognition data obtained by scanning pictures across Facebook, violating the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act (CUBI) and the Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA), according to court documents. The settlement is the largest ever obtained by a single state and by an attorney general in history, according to the press release.
“After vigorously pursuing justice for our citizens whose privacy rights were violated by Meta’s use of facial recognition software, I’m proud to announce that we have reached the largest settlement ever obtained from an action brought by a single State,” Paxton said in the press release. “This historic settlement demonstrates our commitment to standing up to the world’s biggest technology companies and holding them accountable for breaking the law and violating Texans’ privacy rights. Any abuse of Texans’ sensitive data will be met with the full force of the law.” (RELATED: Meta Finally Lifts Lingering Restrictions On Trump Months Out From November)
Meta admitted no wrongdoing, according to the final settlement documents. Facebook discontinued the use of its facial recognition software in 2021, according to its website.
“We are pleased to resolve this matter, and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potentially developing data centers,” a Meta spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The “Tag Suggestions” feature was introduced to Facebook in 2011, which allowed users to more easily find people to “tag” in their photos, according to the press release. The feature used facial recognition technology to scan faces, but Meta allegedly did not warn users of how the technology worked and did not ask for permission from the users, which allegedly violated CUBI.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on January 31, 2024 in Washington, DC. The committee heard testimony from the heads of the largest tech firms on the dangers of child sexual exploitation on social media. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“The scope of Facebook’s misconduct is staggering,” Paxton said in the 2021 lawsuit. “Facebook repeatedly captured Texans’ biometric identifiers without consent not hundreds, or thousands, or millions of times — but billions of times, all in violation of CUBI and DTPA.”
Meta has been scrutinized for privacy violations before, as Meta shareholders filed a class action lawsuit in 2018 suing the company for misusing and failing to protect users’ information from a data leak that occurred in 2015, which compromised 87 million users, according to Reuters. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2020, but revived in 2023 by a federal court of appeals and has since been taken up by the Supreme Court as of June 2024, according to Reuters.
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