Facebook to face privacy lawsuit over photo tagging

A Facebook logo seen through the windows of the NASDAQ stock exchange in 2012. SAN FRANCISCO -- A San Francisco federal judge rejected Facebook's request to toss a lawsuit alleging its photo-tagging feature that uses facial recognition technology invades users' privacy. U.S. District Judge James Donato allowed the case to move forward against Facebook under an Illinois law that bans collecting and storing biometric data without explicit consent. "The Court accepts as true plaintiffs' allegations that Facebook's face recognition technology involves a scan of face geometry that was done without plaintiffs' consent," Donato wrote in Thursday's ruling. Facebook launched the photo-tagging tool in 2010 which automatically matches names to faces in photos uploaded to the social network.