Meta To Pay Texas $1.4bn Over Biometric Data Breach

The owner of Facebook, Meta has agreed to pay $1.4bn to settle a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas due to the illegal use of facial-recognition technology to collect biometric data of millions of Texans without their consent.

This landmark agreement, reported by Reuters on Tuesday, is the largest of its kind with a single state, according to Texas’ legal team, which included the law firm Keller Postman.

The lawsuit, filed in 2022, was the first major case to be brought under Texas’ 2009 biometric privacy law, according to law firms tracking the litigation. A provision of the law provides damages of up to $25,000 per violation.

Texas accused Facebook of capturing biometric information “billions of times” from photos and videos that users uploaded to the social media platform as part of a free, discontinued feature called “Tag Suggestions”.