The Texas state attorney's office has sued and sued Meta Inc.'s Facebook for violating state privacy protection laws by using facial-recognition technology to silently collect biometric data of millions of Texas citizens.
According to the filing, Facebook is accused of taking users ’biometric information through photos and videos uploaded from its automated tagging system, then disclosing that information and failing to destroy it within a reasonable time.
State's attorney, Ken Paxton, expressed his dissatisfaction with the dishonest business practices of a handful of tech giants and vowed to fight for the privacy and safety rights of Texas citizens.
According to sources, a Meta spokesperson said it had long since stopped using the technology and they would defend themselves accordingly against the allegations.
Meta is believed to have disabled the functionality of the automatic tagging system in the Facebook platform in the last year.
This is not the first time Facebook has faced a problem like this.
Last year in Illinois, Facebook paid US $ 650 million as a settlement to the state’s lawsuit over the same issue.
