Texas attorney general Ken Paxton has sued Google for allegedly collecting and using biometric data belonging to millions of Texans without proper consent.
The Texas AG says that Google allegedly used products and services like Google Photos, Google Assistant, and Nest Hub Max to collect a vast array of biometric identifiers, including voiceprints and records of face geometry since 2015.
This would be a violation of the state's biometric privacy act (aka the Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act) which requires companies to get request the users' consent when collecting their biometric identifiers (i.e., "a retina or iris scan, fingerprint, voiceprint, or record of hand or face geometry").
"For more than a decade, Texas has prohibited companies from capturing Texans' biometric data—including the unique characteristics of an individual's face and voice—without their informed, advance consent," the petition reads [PDF].
"In blatant defiance of that law, Google has, since at least 2015, collected biometric data from innumerable Texans and used their faces and their voices to serve Google's commercial ends."
Stream of lawsuits targeting Google's privacy violations and more
Paxton has filed other lawsuits against Google for invading Texans' privacy while using its products and services.
For instance, in January 2022, the Texas AG sued Google for violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices-Consumer Protection Act.
Less than a week later, Paxton filed another lawsuit over Google alleged deceptive tracking of its users' location without consent and the use of location data for targeted ads.
"Google’s indiscriminate collection of the personal information of Texans, including very sensitive information like biometric identifiers, will not be tolerated," Paxton added today. "I will continue to fight Big Tech to ensure the privacy and security of all Texans."
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) fined Google $60 million in August for misleading Australian Android users regarding collecting and using their location data for almost two years, between January 2017 and December 2018.
In January, France's National Commission on Informatics and Liberty (CNIL) also fined Google $170 million for making it difficult to reject tracking cookies by hiding the option behind multiple clicks, an infringement of the freedom of consent of Internet users.
Previously, Google was fined $2.72 billion for abusing its dominant market position to tweak search results, $1.7 billion for anti-competitive practices in online advertising, €220 million for favoring its services to the disadvantage of competitors, and $11.3 million for aggressive data collection.
Comments
ThomasMann - 1 year ago
Texans are not really famous for their intelligence, but even this clown might know better...
Google and governments... let us say: work very well together. And just because something is not a law yet, that does not mean....
There will NEVER be security from the governments and digital corporations. Because... if people cared, they would all throw away their phones.
As can be expected, no one does that, so get used to the real world where there is NO security.
AutomaticJack - 1 year ago
The TOS will see him out the door.
johnlsenchak - 1 year ago
Ed Snowden warned people about this kind of stuff , not to many people listened
herbman - 1 year ago
The main stream media NEVER EVER TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT ANYTHING . They alter , delete , edit , omit and add wording to fit their narratives 100% of the time and have been doing that for decades .
A small example of main stream media sources below , all listed names are guilty of it and can NEVER be trusted.
Cnn, Msnbc, Abc, Cbs, Nbc, HuffPost, NYT, WashPost, The AP, BuzzFeed, Politico, NewsWeek, The Hill, Rolling Stone, Twitter , Sky News, Mediate, The Atlantic, USA Today, Time magazine, LA Times, Politifact, Reuters, Facebook , BBC, Wikipedia, Boston Globe, Vox, The Miami Herald, Mother Jones, Instagram, Factcheck .or, HLN , Yahoo, MSN, NY Daily News, Vice, Univision, People magazine, PBS, NPR, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Daily Beast, Bloomberg, Aurn, National Journal, BI ,
It's very very very difficult to find factual information these days since all search engines only link to propaganda sources .
Try searching for political info on Google and other main stream search engines for instance , the ONLY links they will show you are from the above sources . Twitter and Facebook will also ONLY link to the above sources .
99.9% of all factcheckers are liberal owned and funded as well and their sole purpose is to confirm the lies that the above sources report . It fools a lot of people because they truly believe factcheckers are legit factcheckers but nothing could be further from the truth .
By far the best way to know with 100% certainty what's factual info is to seek out what the above listed sources insist is disinformation because what they claim is disinformation and not trustworthy is ALWAYS 100% trustworthy .
What the above sources promote as real news IS NEVER EVER real news .
ThomasMann - 1 year ago
That is nonsense and it is not really helpful. First of all, all these mentioned "news"sources will always tell you, what the "enemy" want the masses to believe.
If you get your "information" from these, then you are a moron and can be happy. Because in a democracy that means you are part of the majority...
There are many so-called alternative media around, but you will still have the task to figure out which ones ofthose are not also bullshitting you.
But then... if you do not have enough intelligence to understand and successfully do that, then you belong to huge mass of idiots anyway...
Owhodis - 1 year ago
@herbman You forgot Fox News
EndangeredPootisBird - 1 year ago
He intentionally left it out, anything thats not ultra-conservative is "mainstream", shills who intentionally spreads fake news to gain viewers.
Funfact: our version of Fox News here in Sweden is samnytt.se, your average conservatives who think globalist jews control the world with space lasers, plus they love Putin and they adore the far-right Sweden Democrats, and anything left wing is propaganda, when its pretty obvious who believes in propaganda.
thatirish - 1 year ago
Several years ago an individual started a business scraping photos off of FB and selling the info to police departments. It took a few hours for me to finally cleanse my FB acct of 10 years worth of family photos I had posted over the years. Lesson learned. Obviously I don't post such things on social media anymore. Needless to say I am much more privacy conscious than I was 5 years ago. My moral to the story is if you don't want it in the wild don't post it.
ThomasMann - 1 year ago
That problem with that is, that persons who understand what you write BEFORE they start using social media, are rather rare.
Digitalisation IS the problem, and what is worse, NOTHING can be done about it. Our future will be no different from China. I have six different e-mail accounts with different names, none of which is mine, and I do not use a phone. Still with face recognition and getting a passport sooner or later I also will have to move to a country where the state is so poor, that it will be less competent for a while longer...
At the moment my real identity cannot be connected to any of the other names... which actually feels quite good.
For now... :-)