A federal judge has refused to throw out a lawsuit alleging that social networking firm Shutterfly violated an Illinois privacy law regarding faceprints.The ruling, issued Friday by U.S. District Court Judge Joan B. Gottschall in Illinios, means that Florida resident Alejandro Monroy can move forward with a class-action complaint accusing Shutterfly of violating the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. That law, passed in 2008, requires companies to obtain written releases from people before collecting certain biometric data, including fingerprints, retinal scans and scans of face geometry.The Illinois measure also requires companies that gather biometric data to notify people about the practice, and to publish a schedule for destroying the information. The law also provides for up to $5,000 in damages for intentional violations.The ruling stems from a 2016 lawsuit centering on Shutterfly's alleged use of facial recognition technology on photos uploaded by users. Monroy, who says he has never used Shutterfly's service, alleged that he discovered last June that his photo had been uploaded to the service and “tagged” with his name. Monroy said the person who uploaded the photo did so while in Illinois.”Upon upload of the photograph of Plaintiff, Shutterfly automatically located Plaintiff's face, analyzed the geometric data relating to the unique contours of his face ߪ and used that data to extract and collect Plaintiff's scan of face geometry (i.e., his biometric identifier),” his complaint alleged.
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