Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton Wins $1.4 Billion Settlement
Jose Nino
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Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton recently announced that he won a $1.4 billion settlement from Meta, the parent company of Facebook, over privacy-related issues dealing with Facebook acquiring Texan users’ facial and biometric data without their knowledge or getting their consent.
“We have secured a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta to stop the company’s practice of capturing and using the personal biometric data of millions of Texans without the authorization required by law,” Paxton declared in a X/Twitter post that he published on July 30, 2024.
“This settlement is the largest ever obtained from an action brought by a single State and the largest privacy settlement an Attorney General has ever obtained,” Paxton continued. “This serves as a warning to any companies engaged in practices that violate Texans’ privacy rights.”
In his social media post, the attorney general shared a press release expanding on the settlement and the case.
Back in February 2022, Paxton “sued Meta for unlawfully capturing the biometric data of millions of Texans without obtaining their informed consent as required by Texas law,” the press release highlighted.
“Specifically, Meta’s data collection violated Texas’ ‘Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier’ Act (CUBI) and the Deceptive Trade Practices Act,” Paxton remarked.
The press release detailed that for over a decade Meta had been “capturing records of the facial geometry” of users through its new “Tag Suggestions’ feature, which the tech giant rolled out in 2011,” the press release detailed.
Meta asserted Tag Suggestions “would improve the user experience by making it easier for users to ‘tag’ photographs with the names of people in the photo.”
However, the social media giant “automatically turned this feature on for all Texans without explaining how the feature worked,” the statement added.
“Unbeknownst to most Texans, for more than a decade Meta ran facial recognition software on virtually every face contained in the photographs uploaded to Facebook, capturing records of the facial geometry of the people depicted,” Paxton continued in his press release.
“Meta did this despite knowing that CUBI forbids companies from capturing biometric identifiers of Texans, including records of face geometry, unless the business first informs the person and receives their consent to capture the biometric identifier,” Paxton remarked.
Paxton revealed that the $1.4 billion settlement was the largest ever obtained by a single state government against a company.
The state will have the settlement paid out over a time period of five years.
“This historic settlement demonstrates our commitment to standing up to the world’s biggest technology companies and holding them accountable for breaking the law and violating Texans’ privacy rights,” Paxton proclaimed. “Any abuse of Texans’ sensitive data will be met with the full force of the law.”
It’s high time that Big Tech companies like Meta/Facebook get put in their place. For too long, they have behaved like private arms of the managerial state, and have carried out the state’s agenda without impunity.
At some point, prudential state power must be used to check these companies’ influence. Good on Paxton for getting Meta cough up some cash for its nefarious practices.
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