Face recognition is the line Meta keeps approaching without crossing, and a new lawsuit argues it crossed it while building the feature. The proposed class action, filed in the United States, cites Illinois and California privacy rules.

At issue: whether Meta mined pictures from Facebook and Instagram to train its own image models, and to prepare NameTag, a face matching system built for its camera glasses that has never been released.

The feature was never live. Wired surfaced it in June by cracking open the companion app for Meta’s glasses, software already sitting on more than 50 million phones. As designed, a face caught by the camera became a biometric signature, checked against templates held on the phone itself, with Meta’s servers able to refresh that store.

Where the templates originated is the unresolved part. The plaintiffs cite internal claims that NameTag could identify strangers via someone’s Meta connections or a public Instagram profile, plus a patent describing matching against profile photos Meta already holds.

Meta rejects the case as meritless. It says it is not building a central face database, that NameTag has not shipped, and that no final decision exists on releasing it.

The stakes are simple. If face recognition reaches glasses, the difference between a helpful assistant and a surveillance device is one toggle.

Source: Wired