Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, has agreed to pay $1.4 billion to the state of Texas. This settlement is to resolve a lawsuit that accused Meta of using facial recognition technology to collect biometric data of millions of Texans without their consent.
This lawsuit, which was filed in 2022, is significant because it was the first major case brought under Texas’ biometric privacy law that was enacted in 2009. According to this law, violations can result in damages of up to $25,000 per incident. The terms of this settlement represent the largest payment ever made by a single state, according to the legal team representing Texas, which included the plaintiffs’ firm Keller Postman.
Despite agreeing to the settlement, Meta has continued to deny any wrongdoing. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton stated that this settlement shows the state’s commitment to holding major technology companies accountable for breaking laws and violating the privacy rights of Texans.
ALSO READ: “Microsoft Suffers New Outages Weeks After Global CrowdStrike Incident”
The agreement between Texas and Meta was reached in May, just weeks before a trial was scheduled to begin in state court. This is not the first time Meta has faced such issues; in 2020, the company agreed to pay $650 million to settle a similar biometric privacy class action lawsuit under Illinois’ stringent privacy law. In that case as well, Meta denied any wrongdoing.
In a related matter, Alphabet’s Google is also facing a lawsuit by Texas, which accuses the company of violating the state’s biometric law. This indicates a broader trend of states taking action against major tech companies for alleged privacy violations.
Comments