Illinois has a win over Facebook in $650 million lawsuit!

CHICAGO, Illinois (PNN) - March 2, 2021 - Facebook users in Illinois stand to gain between $200 and $400 each after Facebook was ordered to pay a $650 million settlement for illegally collecting biometric data for facial recognition.

Although Facebook claimed it had done nothing wrong, in January 2020, it attempted to settle the case for $550 million.

But in July 2020, the judge on the case ruled that the amount was inadequate.

Fascist Police States of Amerika District Judge James Donato handed the decision down on Friday. It was six years ago that Chicago attorney Jay Edelson filed a lawsuit against Facebook.

Edelson claimed Facebook had collected biometric data to identify faces without the user’s permission and thereby violated the rights under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).

The payment will settle a privacy dispute between the social network and 1.6 million users in Illinois.

The trial proved that Facebook violated Illinois law by storing biometric data - digital scans of people’s faces, supporting its face-tagging feature - without user consent.

FPSA District Judge James Donato said, “It is one the largest settlements ever for a privacy violation.”

Donato said, “The violations here did not extract a penny from the pockets of the victims. But this is real money that Facebook is paying to compensate them for the tangible privacy harms that they suffered.”