Meta will pay Texas $1.4 billion for using facial recognition on the public

Meta has agreed to a $1.4 billion settlement with Texas over its 'unlawful' use of facial recognition technology on residents without prior consent.

Meta will pay Texas $1.4 billion for using facial recognition on the public
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Junior Editor
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The US State of Texas sued Facebook parent company Meta in 2022, allegedly the Mark Zuckerberg-run company "unlawfully" used facial recognition technology on Texans without any prior consent, which is a violation of the state's 2009 Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier (CUBI) Act.

Meta will pay Texas $1.4 billion for using facial recognition on the public 26216

Meta has agreed to a settlement with the state of Texas by agreeing to pay out $1.4 billion over five years, but never admitted any wrongdoing. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton includes a subtle warning to all other tech firms that any violation of Texas' laws surrounding abusing sensitive data of Texans will be "met with the full force of the law."

The settlement is actually a new record in terms of the maximum amount of action brought by a single state, according to Paxton. Notably, the lawsuit included Facebook's 2011 photo tagging feature that used facial recognition software to identify the people in images. Once identified, the feature suggested a user tag that individual in the image, which embedded a link to that person's profile.

Unfortunately for Meta, then-Facebook didn't acquire consent from Texans to scan their faces and add them to a database, which would ultimately be used for commercial purposes, according to Texas prosecutors. Under the CUBI Act companies are prohibited from using any biometric data without consent from the individual.

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Junior Editor

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Jak joined the TweakTown team in 2017 and has since reviewed 100s of new tech products and kept us informed daily on the latest science, space, and artificial intelligence news. Jak's love for science, space, and technology, and, more specifically, PC gaming, began at 10 years old. It was the day his dad showed him how to play Age of Empires on an old Compaq PC. Ever since that day, Jak fell in love with games and the progression of the technology industry in all its forms.

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