Germany: Facebook must destroy facial recognition database [1]

German data protection officials today accused Facebook of “illegally compiling a vast photo database of users without their consent” and demanded that the social network destroy its archive of files based on facial recognition technology, the New York Times [3] reported.

Facebook says [4] that it uses face recognition software to match users’ photos to others and suggest friends to tag in those photos. A user can prevent friends from seeing tag suggestions when they upload photos that look like that user. But this requires opting out through Facebook privacy settings, which Germany notes is a violation of European law.