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Google Wins Dismissal of Suit Over Facial Recognition Software (bloomberg.com)
A lawsuit filed against Google by users who said the world's largest search engine violated their privacy by using facial recognition technology was dismissed by a judge on Saturday. From a report: U.S. District Judge Edmond E. Chang in Chicago cited a lack of "concrete injuries" to the plaintiffs. The suit, initially filed in March 2016, alleged Alphabet's Google collected and stored biometric data from photographs using facial recognition software, running afoul of a unique Illinois law against using a person's image without permission.
There is no expectation of privacy in public.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Is that really a thing? If you break the law and nobody gets hurt, doesn't mean you shouldn't be penalized. For example, what if I'm texting and driving and I don't hit anyone? Does that mean I shouldn't be slapped with a fine for distracted driving -- because there are no concrete injuries?
Mom! Phineas and Ferb are making a title sequence!
why the fuck wasn't this filed in state court?
IDK. It makes no sense. According to TFA, the case was filed on the basis of an Illinois law, so why was it a federal lawsuit?
Man, the USA is a strange place to us Germans.
Even before US data protection laws, recording somebody without somebody's permission, and then publishing them, was always illegal. Yes, also in public.
There were/are, of course freedom of the press laws. So in some cases, they were in direct contradiction, and if somebody sued, a judge decided.
Note how it says "and then publishing them". You could still record them.
Because this whole thing was never about acting like you are in private when you are in public.
(Although courtesy dictates that you leave people alone, even in public. Like when a couple is kissing on a bench behind a bush in a public park, you don't go and stare at or record them.)
It was about the problem of making something that should be forgotten when people forget it, permanent for all eternity. ... While even law, on top of basic human decency, dictates, that everybody must have the chance to be forgiven, eventually. Hence prison sentences not being literally forever.
Because then, somebody can still hate you and harass you for something you did, twenty fucking years ago.
And because statistically you can calculate that there are about 5000 people on this planet, who have the will and the means to bloody murder you for something, whatever that something is.
Add those things together, and taking a photo of you, and uploading it online, knowing the above risks, would have to be considered an act of aiding in bloody murder.
(I would not say that, unless I’d have hard real-world statistics on that calculation above, but technically, using common sense, one would have to.)
This is exactly why we have a "right to be forgotten" law in the EU. And data protection laws.
Not that their implementation is good. Or written by people with a clue about the Internet and modern technology. I'm certainly no fan of the EU (nor nationalism/racism, for that matter).
But it's way better than dismissing the problems in their entirety.
The Illinois statute says the plaintiffs are entitled to the greater of:
A) $1,000
B) Their actual injury / loss
The (stupid?) plaintiffs' attorney filed a federal action under title 3 which requires injuries addressed to be "concrete and particularized" and "actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical."
There is no concrete injury here, so it looks like the plaintiff's attorney screwed up. Should have filed in Illinois and taken $1,000 / person. It's possible that they did first file in Illinois and screwed up the jurisdiction argument.
As much as I dislike the idea of meatspace tracking (and joining of data between meatspace and internet, make no mistake -- this is the ultimate goal of Google et al), I'm pleased with the decision. Don't like it? Take it up with your congresscritter.
I find it interesting that you would cite the 9th circuit's reasoning in Spokeo, and fail to note that the ruling you cite was overruled by Supreme Court.
As the Supreme Court held in Spokeo:
--
a plaintiff does not automatically satisfy
the injury-in-fact requirement whenever a statute grants a right and purports to authorize a suit to vindicate it. Article III standing requires a concrete injury even in the context of a statutory violation.
--
Are you going to cite Dred Scott next and pretend it's current and correct law?
More from the Supreme Court in Spokeo, the exact case you tried to cite: ...
--
(1) The Ninth Circuit's injury-in-fact analysis elided the independent "concreteness" requirement. Both observations it made concerned only "particularization," i.e., the requirement that an injury "affect the plaintiff in a personal and individual way," Lujan, supra, at 560, n. 1, but an injury in fact must be both concrete and particularized, see, e.g., Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus, 573 U. S. Concreteness is quite different from particularization and requires an injury to be "de facto," that is, to actually exist.
We have made it clear time and time again that an injury in fact must be both concrete and particularized.
--
Prior to ubiquitous mobile phone cameras and fixed cameras, there was essentially some level of "privacy" even when in public, because of the impracticality of gathering such data and having the wide scope of data collection to be able to "connect the dots".
Always been legal to have a P.I. tail and photograph you in public.
Always been legal to sit on a bench every day for twenty years and make a note of who passed by.
There were many ways even before smartphones you COULD HAVE easily been tracked if someone cared. Just because there's a lot more data around now does not change the equation even slightly.
What would it even mean to have the right to "public privacy". You can arrest someone from taking a picture of a nice looking park because you happened to be laying the grass? If someone looks at you inadvertently they can be arrested, or later mind-wiped?
The reason why capturing images in public is legal is because anything else is the road to madness and collapse of society.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The US likes it idea that the eye cannot trespass.
What a person can see from public property is all ok.
Now big fast new computers can find that image set again and again.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The right to privacy is defined under Article II of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as:
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Furthermore, libel, slander, unlawful search and seasure laws also apply regarding individual privacy rights and how Google chooses to give out the info of a person's image connected with any kind of identifying info.
Outside of direct privacy violations, other problems arise when data collected by Google is stolen or used by law enforcement/intelligence agencies which makes Google liable if it is the one who took otherwise anonymous info of a person's image and attached an ID to it which was later used. If the ID was accurate and ID theft occurs, Google willingly and actively facilitated that act. If the ID is incorrect and it identifies someone else and either party is part of a crime requiring them to be accurately ID'd, Google is on the hook for bearing false witness.
Most states (and countries) recognize your right to control your own likeness, and prohibits others from profiting from using your likeness for commercial gain without your permission. Historically that has meant that entertainment TV shows have to get signed model releases from everyone who shows up in the picture. That's why reality shows frequently blur out people - they weren't able to get model releases from those persons. (News TV gets a waiver because the importance of reporting news is judged to override personality rights.)
The question here was does that right to control your likeness extend beyond a visual likeness, to cover facial recognition parameters which uniquely identify you and are then used or sold for profit? This judge decided no.
Sure they were, first their privacy was violated. Second your biometric data like your DNA is your own property, especially in the United States where you copyrighted it upon creation via growth and grooming and copyrights multiply with contributors not divide. Google used that property without your consent and also devalued any gains to be made by privacy and may have caused secondary damages for many people (divorces, social complications, etc).
Anytime someone abuses your freedoms and makes revenue there are actual damages of at least that revenue which Google made rather than you.
Christopher Dale Reimer.
There are some pretty sexually obsessed people here who wee him everywhere, behind every AC...etc..
I often make a bag of popcorn and curl up with my iPad to read the fat IT clerk comments and follow the posted video links.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
It's a thing in civil court. The government can fine you without demonstrating injury (your "texting and driving" example), but I cannot sue you for texting and driving next to me unless you injury me in some way (crash into me, etc.) Copyright law attached a "statutory injury" for copyright violations, at the RIAA/MPAA request. So they no longer have to prove the loss of sales, the law already assumes it. We should have statutory injury for privacy violations. Then you would just be able to say "publishing my SSN caused me $100,000 in injuries, because that's what the law says it's worth at a minimum"
Your ad here. Ask me how!
I hope you can forgive that silly blunder. :)
Oh, no problem at all! Of course people will forgive your mistake, even though a record of it still exists.