EFF Profile picture
EFF
We're the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We're a nonprofit that fights for your privacy and free speech online. Find EFF's social media at https://t.co/dIWsCr3WN7.

Aug 8, 2019, 6 tweets

Victory! Federal appellate court allows lawsuit against Facebook for its face surveillance of users to move forward. eff.org/document/patel…

Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act prohibits collection of biometric information, including face surveillance, without informed opt-in consent. Facebook users allege “tag suggestions” violates this law.

Today the Ninth Circuit rejected FB’s defense that its invasion of biometric privacy supposedly is not a sufficient injury to show constitutional standing.

The court explained: “Once a face template of an individual is created, Facebook can use it to identify that individual in any of the other hundreds of millions of photos uploaded to Facebook each day[.]"

The appellate court relied on Carpenter, last year’s historic SCOTUS opinion on privacy in the modern era. Because biometric face templates are “detailed, encyclopedic, and effortlessly compiled,” they are highly injurious to privacy. eff.org/deeplinks/2018…

Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.

A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.

Keep scrolling