Facebook to face US class-action lawsuit over facial recognition photo tagging

Facebook is facing a class-action lawsuit in the US over claims that it unlawfully applied facial recognition technology to users' images without their explicit consent.

The lawsuit, filed by Illinois residents Nimesh Patel, Adam Pezen, and Carlo Licata, alleges that Facebook's face recognition tagging tool - a feature that suggests people to tag after a user uploads a photo - is in violation of Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act.

This law states that a private entity such as Facebook can't collect and store a person's biometric facial information without their explicit consent.

US District Judge James Donato ruled in a San Francisco federal court on Monday that a class-action lawsuit was the most efficient way to resolve the dispute.

We continue to believe the case has no merit and will defend ourselves vigorously

"Consequently, the case will proceed with a class consisting of Facebook users located in Illinois for whom Facebook created and stored a face template after June 7, 2011," Donato said.

In the unlikely case that the class action is successful, the suit seeks penalties of up to $5,000 for every time a user's facial image is used without his or her permission. The judge said the potential damages could amount to 'billions of dollars'.

Facebook, which had been pushing to have the case dismissed, told AFP that the company was reviewing the decision, adding: "We continue to believe the case has no merit and will defend ourselves vigorously."

The company has also long argued that it has been "transparent" about the facial-tagging tool and allows users to turn it off and prevent themselves from being suggested in photo tags.

The controversial feature, launched in 2010, was suspended in Europe in 2012 after regulators ruled that the 'tag suggest' feature wasn't in line with European Union data privacy laws.

Despite this, Facebook earlier this year announced plans to re-introduce facial recognition functionality for European users on an opt-in basis.

Those who choose to switch the feature on will be able to find photos they haven't been tagged in, Facebook said, and will receive alerts when a stranger uses their photo as their profile picture.