US judge to Facebook: Nope, facial recognition lawsuit has to go to jury

Facebook's attempt to push a US court to a quick ruling on a class-action lawsuit over its use of facial recognition technology has been denied. In an order issued yesterday (PDF), district judge James Donato said that the case would go to trial, with a date set for 9 July. The lawsuit is one of the first tests of Illinois' …

[}{amis}{]

LOL

Popcorn where is my popcorn.

This is going to be fun the theoretical top end for the fines in this one are in the region of $75B that's a fine big enough to do some fairly serious damage to Zuk and co.

Good luck to the people of Illinois as they are in for an uphill fight as FB will try every trick in the book to get away from this.

[Blockchain commentard]

Should the UK police ask Facebook for help since their own face recognition software sucks?

[Valeyard]

the problem is that that's where it's all headed

[Doctor Syntax]

"Should the UK police ask Facebook for help since their own face recognition software sucks?"

I was thinking the opposite. FB could try claiming its facial recognition doesn't work because it has 98% false positives.

[Mark 85]

Should the UK police ask Facebook for help since their own face recognition software sucks?

Sure... there's some hefty cash involved though or maybe some ads. Of course all of FB is the database so, the UK cops will get hits with false positives on suspects who live outside the country and have never been to Blighty. I see more than a few extradition orders coming.

[iowe_iowe]

I love seeing big data slurpers on the hook and wriggling!

[Doctor Syntax]

"I love seeing big data slurpers on the hook"

And meanwhile all the lawyers' children avoid starvation for a few more weeks.

[John Gamble]

"And meanwhile all the lawyers' children avoid starvation for a few more weeks."

Good. This is not a case where an ambulance was chased down, this has real consequences, and I suspect it will eventually go to a higher court.

And hurrah to judge Donato for slapping down "similar arguments about extraterritoriality". Facebook's computers may not have been in Illinois, but its reach certainly extended into the state.

[JimmyPage]

IANAL, but this is where UK law fails big time.

The requirement to *prove* a loss.

So police stopped you unlawfully (or even illegally). But you "lost" nothing ?

Jog on, my (poor) friend.

[LeahroyNake]

Naughty list

We've asked Facebook for comment and will update the story if they respond.

I wonder how many naughty lists The Reg is on ! Well done for asking the hard questions !

[Cubical Drone]

Interesting

"learns for itself what distinguishes different faces and then improves itself based on its successes and failures, using unknown criteria that have yielded successful outputs in the past"

If this flies, that means that anyone can hide behind a black box system.

[DavCrav]

Re: Interesting

"If this flies, that means that anyone can hide behind a black box system."

I cannot believe it will. It has to be recognizing something, and there are relatively few things it can be recognizing than facial geometry. Saying 'we don't know what it does, so you cannot sue us' is unlikely to go down well in court.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Interesting

I cannot believe it will. It has to be recognizing something, and there are relatively few things it can be recognizing than facial geometry.

I agree - and further I'd argue that it doesn't matter, since whatever it's recognizing (i.e. however its generated model maps inputs to classes) is functionally equivalent to facial geometry.

But this is likely to be an important decision for the legal status of black-box machine learning, even at the state level. Precedent is limited but if the judgement looks well-reasoned other judges will take notice.

[a_yank_lurker]

Solution

The solution for Failbook is to learning the meaning of ethics and start acting ethically not like some bratty toddler when called for their ethical short comings. Fundamentally, this is what the case is about; unethical and now illegal behavior in some jurisdictions being attacked by the abused.

[Chris G]

Re: Solution

Exactly! Looking at the responses of FarceBook lawyers around the World in the various hearings, it's becoming obvious that they only give a crap about themselves and what they are doing.

The attitude seems to be one of arrogance and the responses frequently patronising towards the various judges and questioners at hearings.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Solution

For a large proportion of the human race, winning the argument is more important than actually being right. The same people are also likely to believe that if they've gotten away with doing something wrong, then it wasn't really wrong.

[ExampleOne]

Big tech firm tries to argue case should be dismissed based on (wilful?) misunderstanding of the rules, Judge has different opinion? Where have we heard this before, in a data protection case?

That trick didn't work for Google in Europe, and somehow I don't see it working in a US court either.

[Claptrap314]

Playing for keeps

At least twice in the article, the judge has rebuked FBs lawyers for attempting to remake legal arguments already rejected. This stinks strongly of attempting to bankrupt the opposition. Judges need to start issuing contempt citations for this sort of abuse of process.

The whole, "it was the algo that did it, not us" thing is going to be fun. As these things evolve, the utility of having corporations as legal persons is going to take on an entirely new level--even if no person in the company knows how the company violated a law in some case, the company clearly violated a law.

[YourNameHere]

But who do we write the checks to if we loose.

I can just imagine the Judge asking Zuck to use facial recognition database to determine who lives in the state and send them a check since he already knows their address, phone number, data of birth, SS number, hobbies, who they voted for...

[Oengus]

What other source

Its argument is that it had reasonably understood BIPA to exclude data harvested from photos

What other source could there be of images. Even if the source is someone posing for a special camera the result will a photo (a still from a video is classed as a photo). I wait to see what argument they bring up that could be an alternate source...

[Nimby]

FAILbook Zucks

Given FAILbook's shaky-at-best legal standing on this issue, and the multiple fails that they have already had in this fight, you would think that FAILbook would just give up instead of trying to make things worse and worse. Except that FAILbook Zucks... Oh. Never mind.