![]() He added, “Plaintiffs do not offer evidence to dispute that their faces are public - just that their facial biometrics are. “Plaintiffs cannot show - and do not argue - that Google ‘intruded into a private place’ by receiving photographs of plaintiffs voluntarily uploaded to Google photos” by themselves or others, Judge Chang said. “The Seventh Circuit has definitively held that retention of an individual’s private information, on its own, is not a concrete injury sufficient” to establish standing, the 28-page opinion states.įurther, there are no allegations that hackers have stolen the plaintiffs’ information or that there has been other unauthorized access to the Google Photos accounts. Last year, Judge Chang rejected the tech giant’s request to dismiss the case, disagreeing with Google’s contention that face-scan measurements derived from a photograph are not biometric identifiers.īut he granted Google’s motion for summary judgment Saturday. Google, without permission, allegedly used the templates to recognize their unique characteristics, including gender, race, age and location. ![]() On behalf of a proposed class, Rivera and Weiss accused the company of violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act because the photos were taken by Google devices in the Prairie State. Lead plaintiff Lindabeth Rivera alleges a photo taken of her on a friend’s Google Android device was automatically uploaded to the company’s cloud-based service, Google Photos, where her facial features were scanned to create a unique face template without her consent.Ĭo-plaintiff Joseph Weiss says Google used photographs from his Android device to “unlawfully create a face scan.” District Judge Edmond Chang on Saturday found that the law cannot be used to protect users from the non-consensual collection of information about what many consider to be private – their face. to regulate the collection of biometric information, which includes facial-recognition data, and remains the only law that allows private individuals to sue for damages stemming from a violation.Īs a result, Illinois has become a testing ground for many new uses of biometric information by social media companies, photo apps, and employers.īut a ruling issued by U.S. Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, enacted in 2008, was the first state law in the U.S. CHICAGO (CN) – A federal judge ruled Saturday that Google does not violate Illinois privacy laws by automatically creating a face template when Android users upload photos taken on their smartphone to the company’s cloud-based photo service. ![]()
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