One of the lawsuits where the agency was the issue is a lawsuit against Facebook. The lawsuit accused Facebook of violating the privacy law of Illinois. The social media giant did not get consent to use facial recognition technology for the scanning of photos that users upload in order to store faces in digital format. According to the Biometric Privacy Act, consumers are allowed to sue companies that have no permission for data harvesting as faces. After that, Facebook changed the photo-tagging system.
The agent did not have the authority to collect and store personal information, such as photos of faces, without getting consent since it is not permitted by the Privacy Act. Before creating and storing faces digitally, the company should acquire permission to do so. James Donato, the US district judge, has approved the class-action lawsuit filed in 2015 in Illinois. He states that it was one of the biggest deals regarding the violation of privacy rights.
I think that the agent could be held personally liable for the action. Facebook wanted the lawsuit to be thrown out due to the fact that users did not suffer or get any kind of injury (Rosenblatt, 2016). It isn’t easy to assess whether the company was acting in good faith when implementing the photo-tagging system. Indeed, Facebook did not cause damage to the users; thus, it would be fair to say that it did not act in bad faith. However, it is undeniable that the violation of the law and rights appeared. The outcome of the case is that a settlement in the amount of $650 was approved by a federal judge. I agree with the outcome of the case because Facebook did not have permission to use photo-tagging and biometric data of the users. Consequently, the company violated the privacy law, as the court had concluded. The issue concerning privacy is a topical question today since the usage of social media platforms is at its peak.
Reference
Rosenblatt, J. (2016). Is Facebook’s Facial-Scanning Technology Invading Your Privacy Rights?. Bloomberg Techonlogy.