{"id":11209,"date":"2018-04-17T05:06:34","date_gmt":"2018-04-17T09:06:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=11209"},"modified":"2018-04-17T05:06:34","modified_gmt":"2018-04-17T09:06:34","slug":"facebook-facial-recognition-faces-class-action-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2018\/04\/17\/facebook-facial-recognition-faces-class-action-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook facial recognition faces class-action lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Facebook must face a class action lawsuit over its use of facial recognition technology, a California judge has ruled.<\/p>\n<p>The lawsuit alleges that Facebook gathered biometric information without users&#8217; explicit consent.<\/p>\n<p>It involves the &#8220;tag suggestions&#8221; technology, which spots users&#8217; friends in uploaded photos; the lawsuit says this breaches Illinois state law.<\/p>\n<p>Facebook said the case had no merit and it would fight it vigorously.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, US District Judge James Donato ruled to certify a class of Facebook users &#8211; a key legal hurdle for a class action suit.<\/p>\n<p>The class of people in question is Facebook users &#8220;in Illinois for whom Facebook created and stored a face template after June 7, 2011&#8221;, according to the court order.<\/p>\n<p>In a successful class action suit, any person in that group could be entitled to compensation.<\/p>\n<p>In his order, Judge Donato wrote: &#8220;Facebook seems to believe&#8230; statutory damages could amount to billions of dollars.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The decision comes days after Facebook CEO\u00a0<a class=\"story-body__link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-us-canada-43719784\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mark Zuckerberg faced intensive questioning by US lawmakers<\/a>\u00a0over the company&#8217;s collection and use of user data.<\/p>\n<div class=\"story-body\">\n<div class=\"story-body__inner\">\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\">What does the facial recognition do?<\/h2>\n<p>June 2011 was the date on which Facebook rolled out its &#8220;tag suggestions&#8221; feature.<\/p>\n<p>The feature suggests who might be present in uploaded photos, based on an existing database of faces.<\/p>\n<p>In Judge Donato&#8217;s ruling, he laid out the four-step process behind the technology:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Initially, the software tries to detect\u00a0<i>any<\/i>\u00a0faces in an uploaded photo<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">It standardizes and aligns them for size and direction<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Then, for each face, Facebook computes a face\u00a0<i>signature<\/i>\u00a0&#8211; a mathematical representation of the face in that photo<\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\">Face signatures are then run through a stored database of user face\u00a0<i>templates<\/i>to look for similar matches<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image__img js-image-replace\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef-1.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/8FE8\/production\/_100904863_tagging-settings.jpg\" alt=\"A slightly cropped and rotated screenshot of the tagging settings page on a Facebook profile\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\" data-highest-encountered-width=\"624\" \/><\/span><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"media-caption__text\">The tag suggestions feature is not currently available in the UK<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"story-body__link-external\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/help\/218540514842030?helpref=faq_content\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">On its help pages, Facebook says the face templates<\/a>\u00a0are made from information about the similarities in every photo the user has been tagged in.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;ve never been tagged in a photo on Facebook or have untagged yourself in all photos of you on Facebook, then we do not have this summary information for you,&#8221; the company says.<\/p>\n<p>The feature is not available to users in most countries, including the UK &#8211; and can be turned off in settings for US users.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/technology-43792125\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"topic-tags\">\n<div id=\"u2961069978773594\">\n<div class=\"tags-container\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\">Facebook must face a class action lawsuit over its use of facial recognition technology, a California judge has ruled. The lawsuit alleges that Facebook gathered biometric information without users&#8217; explicit consent. It involves the &#8220;tag <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2018\/04\/17\/facebook-facial-recognition-faces-class-action-lawsuit\/\" title=\"Facebook facial recognition faces class-action lawsuit\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[109,2,3],"tags":[177,3236,335],"class_list":{"0":"post-11209","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headline","8":"category-news","9":"category-usa","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-data-protection","12":"tag-facebook","13":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11209"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11210,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11209\/revisions\/11210"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}