On Tuesday, Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX) revealed that his office secured a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta over the company's unauthorized capture of personal biometric data from Texans. The settlement is the largest ever obtained by a single state and the largest ever obtained by an attorney general of a state.
"We have secured a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta to stop the company's practice of capturing and using the personal biometric data of millions of Texans without the authorization required by law," Paxton wrote on X. "This settlement is the largest ever obtained from an action brought by a single State, and the largest privacy settlement an Attorney General has ever obtained. This serves as a warning to any companies engaged in practices that violate Texans' privacy rights."
In a press release, Paxton explained that the settlement was obtained under Texas's "Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier" (CUBI) Act. "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," Ken Paxton said. "The 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."
As a part of Paxton's crusade against Big Tech, the Texas official sued Meta for violating the CUBI Act and the Deceptive Trade Practices Act in February 2022. The lawsuit stems from a feature in 2011 by Facebook that automatically tagged people in photographs posted on the platform using facial recognition software to scan faces. This feature was automatically turned on for users without it being explained to those using the app, violating Texas law.
"Unbeknownst to most Texans, for more than a decade, Meta ran facial recognition software on virtually every face contained in the photographs uploaded to Facebook, capturing records of the facial geometry of the people depicted," Paxton explained. "Meta did this despite knowing that CUBI forbids companies from capturing biometric identifiers of Texans, including records of face geometry, unless the business first informs the person and receives their consent to capture the biometric identifier."
https://twitter.com/KenPaxtonTX/status/1818284641587257574
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