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.

Comments

It's about *permanency*, not publicness.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.
Because then, somebody can still hate you and harass you for something you did, twenty fucking years ago. ... 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.
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.