• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

Siding with Meta Platforms, a federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a California resident who claimed the company violated an anti-hacking law by allegedly collecting his "voiceprint" when he made a call with Messenger.

U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer in the Northern District of California said in a September 15 ruling that the plaintiff, Nicholas Robinson, consented to the alleged data collection by accepting Meta's terms of service.

Those terms incorporated a privacy notice stating that Meta might use voice recordings to identify people.

The ruling brought an end to a lawsuit dating to January, when Robinson alleged in a class-action complaint that Meta violated the California Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, which prohibits companies from accessing computer systems without permission.

He alleged that Meta's "maze of privacy policies" failed to accurate describe its policies regarding voiceprints, and that the company profited from biometric data by using it to improve voice recognition software, and to identify users in order to serve them with targeted ads.

Meta argued the case should be dismissed for several reasons, including that Robinson "voluntarily uploaded voice and audio files to Meta’s services and gave Meta broad authorization to use them -- including for the identification and ad-targeting purposes he alleges."

Breyer agreed with Meta's arguments.

"It is of no consequence that Meta disclosed its policy across several documents," Breyer wrote, adding that Meta's statements regarding voice recordings were incorporated through its terms of service and Facebook sign-up page.

Meta "did not knowingly and without permission access Robinson's data," and therefore did not violate California's anti-hacking law, he added.

The company currently faces another suit over voiceprints, but that matter was filed by an Illinois resident who claimed the company violated that state's biometric privacy law, which prohibits the collection of biometric information such as voiceprints without a user's written consent.

Earlier this year, a federal judge rejected Meta's request to throw out that case, ruling that the dispute involved factual questions -- including questions about Meta's technology and whether the company actually did gather "voiceprints" -- that couldn't be resolved without additional court proceedings.