Facebook Faces Lawsuit

Deutsche Welle reported that the state data protection authority in Hamburg plans to sue Facebook over its facial-recognition feature. The reason for the lawsuit is the fact that the facial-recognition requires storing a comprehensive database of the biometric features of all users, reported by the organization. According to the law Facebook should have had unequivocal consent of the parties by both European and national data protection law, before introducing the new feature.

The feature was quietly rolled out in June and immediately attracted the regulatory attention of the European Union, which announced it would study the feature for possible rule violations. Authorities in the U.K. and Ireland have also said they are reviewing the photo-tagging feature.