The Data Protection Commissioner is largely satisfied with progress so far. Europe-V-Facebook is not.
The Commissioner states that “most of [his earlier] recommendations have been fully implemented to our full satisfaction.” In a small number of cases, such as new user education, deletion of social plug-in impression data for EU users and fully verified account selection beyond all doubt, “full implementation has not yet been achieved but is planned to be achieved by a specified deadline.” In one area at least, Facebook is standing its ground, with the report commenting on its “insistence on maintaining its requirement that users use their real names on the network.”
However, the headline concession from Facebook is that it has suspended its so-called ‘tag-suggest’ feature in Europe, or more specifically, the European Union. This is the automatic facial recognition system that recognizes and suggests names for people included in photographs uploaded to Facebook, without the consent of those so recognized and tagged. “As a gesture of goodwill,” notes the report, in August Facebook “suspended the Tag Suggest feature for all EEA users who had joined since 1 July.” Furthermore, adds the Commissioner, Facebook “has also agreed to delete collected templates for EU use[r]s by 15 October.”
On the surface, this looks like a strong win for the privacy activists – but Europe-V-Facebook is not content. While accepting that this is not a legal response to its complaints, nevertheless it said, “While normal people have to stick to the law and face consequences when breaking it, Facebook seems to be immune – at least against privacy laws.”
A major issue for the group is that it feels excluded from the process. “The breaches of the law are quite obvious,” said Max Schrems. “Unfortunately the Irish authority is currently denying access to all files, evidence and even the arguments by Facebook. This might mean that we are made blind in this proceeding, which makes it hard to even enforce the most basic principles in the law.”
Meanwhile, Facebook has made it clear that this isn’t the end of its facial recognition system. Richard Allen, Facebook’s director of policy for EMEA, told Reuters that the company was committed to bringing the tag suggest feature back once it had taken steps to put it in line with EU guidance.