• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, Yesterday

Google has agreed to pay $1.375 billion to settle privacy claims in Texas -- including charges that it captured people's faceprints and voiceprints, in violation of a state biometric privacy law, Attorney General Ken Paxton said late last week.

The deal resolves two separate lawsuits brought by Paxton in 2022.

In one case, he accused Google of violating the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act, which requires companies to obtain people's consent to the collection of faceprints, voiceprints and other biometrics. That law -- one of a handful of state measures regulating biometric privacy -- can only be enforced by the attorney general, and provides for penalties of up to $25,000 per violation.

That complaint focused on Google Photos, the Nest smart-home hub, and the voice-activated Google Assistant. He specifically alleged that Google Photos and Nest use facial-recognition software to garner faceprints of users as well as non-users who appear in images, and that Nest and Assistant also allegedly capture voiceprints.

The second suit involved claims that Google duped consumers about its collection and use of location data, and that it deceptively collected data from Chrome users who browsed in incognito mode.

That suit was dismissed in January by a Texas appellate court, which ruled that Texas courts lacked jurisdiction because Google's statements regarding privacy were not made by any of the company's approximately 5,500 Texas-based employees.

Paxton appealed the dismissal, and reached a settlement with Google while the appeal was pending.

Google spokesperson José Castañeda said the settlement covers “a raft of old claims, many of which have already been resolved elsewhere, concerning product policies we have long since changed.”

Google did not admit to wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

The company currently faces a separate class-action complaint alleging that it violated an Illinois biometric privacy law by failing to obtain consumers' written consent before collecting or storing scans of face geometry. That suit dates to 2020, when Illinois residents Steven Vance and Tim Janecyk alleged that Google acquired a database of faces from IBM, which itself reportedly obtained 100 million pictures from the photo-sharing service Flickr. Google allegedly obtained the database in order to improve its own facial recognition service.