The privacy authority of Hamburg is going to take legal action against Facebook because of deploying a facial recognition feature to automatically tag. According to the watchdog, this is illegal.
According to the Hamburg Commission for Data protection and freedom of Information is Facebook the request for facial recognition technology to bring it into line with European and German regulations are not complied with and, therefore, legal action is being prepared. Facebook had according to the organization, failed to advance permission to users to questions, as required by law. Facebook uses facial recognition to give people added photos to recognize, allowing users to them as such, can tag.
Facebook is negotiating for a long time with the guard dog, who does not agree with the latest proposal of the social-networkingsite to have a checkbox to enter, which the user would declare to agree with the functionality. “It is unclear whether and to what extent the terms and conditions that the user is actually to inform about the face recognition and the biometric database,” writes the privacyorganisatie in a statement. Also, only new members the letter of agreement be presented.
The German spokeswoman for Facebook says the legal action “unnecessary”. The tag functionality would fully comply with European regulations, and users would be adequately informed about the functionality. “Our users can use the feature to also easily turn off in their account settings, if they do not want to make”, wrote the spokeswoman in an e-mail to German media.