In a complaint filed today, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton labeled one of Google’s facial recognition systems a “contemporary Eye of Sauron” and accused the company of collecting biometric data.
By collecting “millions of biometric identifiers, including voiceprints and recordings of face geometry from Texans through its goods and services like Google Photos, Google Assistant, and Nest Hub Max,” according to Paxton, Google violated the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act. Before collecting biometric identifiers, user consent is required under state legislation.
In a press release today, Paxton stated that “Google’s indiscriminate gathering of the personal information of Texans, especially particularly sensitive information like biometric identifiers, would not be accepted.”
District Court for Midland County received the complaint. It claims that “Google has now illegally spent years gathering the faces and voices of both non-consenting users and non-users throughout Texas, including our children and grandparents, who simply have no idea that their biometric information is being mined for profit by a worldwide business.”
The “New Eye of Sauron”
The lawsuit’s description of the Nest Hub Max’s Face Match feature made a Lord of the Rings allusion. The lawsuit continued, saying: “Face Match uses facial-recognition technology to allow the Nest Hub Max to see who is using the device and to provide user-specific material based on whoever the device sees.”
The Nest Hub Max’s camera is built to be a contemporary Eye of Sauron—always monitoring and ready to recognize a face it recognizes—in order for Face Match to function. This means that the Google device willfully records the face geometry of every Texan who happens to be in the camera’s field of vision, even non-users who have never given Google permission to record their biometric data and who, more than likely, aren’t even aware that Google is doing it. In addition, similar to Google Photos, this means that Google collects biometric data from youngsters in Texas who may be enticed by curiosity to stand in front of the Nest Hub Max while the camera observes and records them.
