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

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.

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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.