A court in Illinois has denied a request by Shutterfly to dismiss a lawsuit alleging that its facial recognition-based photo tagging system violates the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).In the suit, the plaintiff claims he is not a registered Shutterfly user, but that his biometric was still stored by the service after a friend had uploaded group photos depicting. This meant his faceprint was added to the firm's database though as a non-member of the service he had never formally consented to this collection.The court ruled that the plaintiff could proceed with his claim under BIPA, stating:”Plaintiff alleges that Defendants are using his personal face pattern to recognize and identify Plaintiff in photographs posted to Websites. Plaintiff avers that he is not now nor has he ever been a user of Websites, and that he was not presented with a written biometrics policy nor has he consented to have his biometric identifiers used by Defendants. As a result, the Court finds that Plaintiff has plausibly stated a claim for relief under the BIPA”.Facebook has faced similar lawsuits. In April, plaintiff Carlo Licata claimed in a suit that Facebook's tag feature is in violation of the BIPA, and was soon followed by the plaintiffs Adam Pezen and Nimesh Patel. Plaintiff Frederick William Gullen also filed suit in Chicago federal court in Illinois on August 31.All say that the social media giant had not obtained written consent for facial data used in the tag feature, or failed to inform their users how long this particular information would be stored or used.In moving to dismiss in October, Facebook stated that Gullen's premise is wrong from the start.”Tag Suggestions does not apply to people without Facebook accounts,” says a document filed by Facebook's attorneys in support of the motion to dismiss. “If a person who is tagged in a photo on Facebook does not have a Facebook account, Facebook does not, contrary to ߪ the complaint, save a 'face template' and 'corresponding name identification' in its 'database.'”
Court rejects Shutterfly request to dismiss privacy lawsuit
