Google Photos App (Photo: Shutterstock.com)Google Hit With Class Action Under Illinois Biometric Privacy Law Over Facial Recognition
The complaint claims Google "failed to obtain consent from anyone" when it introduced facial recognition to its cloud service for storing and sharing photos. The lawsuit comes in the wake of the announcement of a proposed $550 million settlement that Facebook Inc. reached in a BIPA class action.
February 07, 2020 at 12:32 PM
3 minute read
Google LLC has been hit with a class action lawsuit claiming that its Google Photos service uses facial recognition technology that violates an Illinois biometric privacy law that carries stiff statutory penalties.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, claims that Google has failed to get the consent or written release required under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, a 2008 law that requires companies that collect and store state residents' unique identifiers such as fingerprints, iris scans, DNA and face geometry to provide details on how they store and protect the sensitive information. The statute carries statutory damages of $1,000 for negligent violations and $5,000 for violations found to be intentional or reckless.
Lawyers at Ahdoot & Wolfson in Los Angeles and Carey Rodriguez Milian Gonya in Miami claim that Google "failed to obtain consent from anyone" when it introduced facial recognition to Google Photos, its cloud service for storing and sharing photos. They're seeking to certify a class of individuals from whom Google obtained biometric identifiers via photographs uploaded in Illinois.
"Google's proprietary facial recognition technology scans each and every photo uploaded to the cloud-based Google Photos for faces, extracts geometric data relating to the unique points and contours (i.e., biometric identifiers) of each face, and then uses that data to create and store a template of each face—all without ever informing anyone of this practice," they write. They also claim that Google holds several patents for facial recognition that detail how the company scans photos for facial identifiers and creates face templates "without obtaining informed written consent."
Representatives for Google didn't immediately respond to request for comment Friday morning.
Tina Wolfson of Ahdoot & Wolfson, likewise, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
The Google lawsuit comes in the wake of the announcement of a proposed $550 million settlement that Facebook Inc. reached in lawsuits bringing claims under BIPA. The Facebook deal, which has yet to be filed in court, is still subject to approval from U.S. District Judge James Donato of the Northern District of California. Donato at a hearing Thursday asked lawyers in that case to provide detailed explanations of why the deal would pay class members less than statutory damages amounts.
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