A federal judge approved a $650 million class-action settlement in litigation that accused Facebook of failing to secure consent before using biometrics to scan photos uploaded by users and store them digitally, according to media reports.
“The Court has no trouble finding that class counsel achieved an excellent result for the class,” U.S. District Judge James Donato wrote in his Feb. 26 final approval order awarding attorney fees and costs. “The $650 million paid by Facebook is real money by any standard.”
Although the lawsuit was filed in Illinois, it was removed to the Northern District of California because Facebook is headquartered in California.
“Facial recognition and collecting biometrics is the new frontier for a lot of companies and the idea is that if tech companies can tell who you are, then they can track everything you do and that was our big concern with the lawsuit,” said Jay Edelson, the attorney who litigated the lawsuit against Facebook. “Storing faces digitally is a number of years away from where companies can do that but we were concerned that that was Facebook’s ultimate business plan.”
As a result of the litigation, Facebook is required to secure clear consent from its users.
“People know that they're actually collecting what we believe are biometric information that Facebook users have to make an informed decision about whether they want Facebook to have that information or not,” Edelson said.
Edelson told the Southern California Record that the case sets three clear precedents that could impact future biometric lawsuits.
First, as Judge Donato stated in his final approval ruling, at $650 million, the settlement is a landmark result.
“It is one the largest settlements ever for a privacy violation, and it will put at least $345 into the hands of every class member interested in being compensated,” he wrote.
Of the $650 million, Judge Donato awarded class counsel $97.5 million in attorneys’ fees, reimbursed class counsel $915,454.37 for their litigation expenses, and granted $1,828,009.89 in costs to the settlement administrator.
“There's a lot of biometrics cases playing out in Illinois and everybody is, of course, leaning heavily on this Facebook litigation and then the settlement itself sets a huge precedent,” Edelson said. “It sets the bar, as Judge Donato said himself, for how we should view any other settlement under privacy laws.”
Secondly, while Facebook and other big tech companies fight the idea that a statutory privacy violation is genuine harm, Edelson proved them wrong under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
“We established a lot of law, from people's rights to sue under the statute to what biometric means and how you can get a class certified,” Edelson said.
Finally, the case set a new high bar for privacy-related settlements.
“We got a 22% claims rate, which is really unheard of in this space, and the judge in his final approval order focused on that and made it clear that when other people put together privacy deals, they better be shooting for those same numbers,” Edelson said.
Judge Donato also wrote in his ruling that the $650 million settlement is a landmark result.
“It is one the largest settlements ever for a privacy violation, and it will put at least $345 into the hands of every class member interested in being compensated,” he stated. “At the Court’s request, the parties jointly developed an innovative notice and claims procedure that generated an impressive claims rate.”