Texas sues Facebook bigly: says FB was 'secretly capturing' users' "highly sensitive information"

The great state of Texas is suing Facebook's parent company, Meta Platforms Inc., alleging they violated the state's privacy protections, as the media giant faces more legal battles.

The lawsuit was filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. It states that Facebook unlawfully collected facial recognition data without user consent, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Meta has discontinued their facial recognition technology, which was often used for “tag suggestions” to encourage users to link photos to a friend’s profile, which would add to the data collection.

The Texas lawsuit alleges that Facebook should be responsible for billions of dollars in damages. Paxton said that the company violated the privacy laws of Texas by using the biometric data of millions throughout the state, both those who used Facebook and those who did not.

“In this action, the State alleges that Facebook unlawfully captured the biometric identifiers of Texans for a commercial purpose without their informed consent, disclosed those identifiers to others and failed to destroy collected identifiers within a reasonable time, all in violation of the Texas Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier Act,” the lawsuit states.

Paxton also released a statement alleging the company captured facial geometry in photos that users uploaded from 2010 to last year — when Facebook discontinued their facial recognition. This resulted in “tens of million of violations” of Texas law.

“Facebook has been secretly harvesting Texans’ most personal information — photos and videos — for its own corporate profit,” Paxton said, the WSJ reported.

“Texas law has prohibited such harvesting without informed consent for over 20 years. While ordinary Texans have been using Facebook to innocently share photos of loved ones with friends and family, we now know that Facebook has been brazenly ignoring Texas law for the last decade,” he added.

“‘Facebook was secretly capturing, disclosing, unlawfully retaining — and profiting off of — Texans’ most personal and highly sensitive information,” the complaint reads, according to the WSJ.

Texas law makes it unlawful to capture people’s biometric identifiers without consent. The state’s laws also prohibit sharing any identifier information. 

The Texas law provides a $25,000 fine per violation and with millions of Texans using the platform, the lawsuit is estimated to run billions of dollars in damages, the WSJ wrote.

Paxton condemned “Big Tech” in general for illegal practices like this, and said that Facebook must stop taking advantage of its users in this way.

“Facebook will no longer take advantage of people and their children with the intent to turn a profit at the expense of one’s safety and well-being. This is yet another example of Big Tech’s deceitful business practices, and it must stop. I will continue to fight for Texans’ privacy and security,” Paxton said in a statement.

While this lawsuit is quite significant because it's coming from a state, other similar lawsuits have been levied against the company.

Last year Facebook settled a class action suit that users brought against it. The suit said that user data has been used without consent. Facebook settled for $650 million, NPR, a taxpayer-funded, left wing outlet reported.

In addition to class action suits, the Federal Trade Commission and other state attorney generals have filed suits against Meta, like the one in 2019, when the company agreed to create more oversight in a privacy settlement with the FTC and also had to pay a $5 billion fine.

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“The FTC and nearly every state attorney general are also seeking to break up Meta for allegedly squashing competition to maintain its dominance in social networking,” The Times reported.

Meta has been vocal about defending itself in these suits, however.

“These claims are without merit, and we will defend ourselves vigorously,” a spokesperson for Meta said, The Times reported.

Hopefully, the Texas lawsuit will succeed and Facebook will get what it deserves.

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San Francisco wants a bill to fine people for smoking in their own apartments

In San Francisco one may not smoke in public, no matter how isolated the smoker is doing the deed. Now the city, where the silk voiced Tony Bennett left his heart, is considering a bill to ban smoking in one's own home, if they live in an apartment. It's as if they are going from a smoking area, to a smoking dot.

According to Reason, the city's Board of Supervisors are considering such a bill and on Thursday voted to advance it. What's next, mandating masks to be worn at home?

The bill these dictators are pushing “would ban smoking inside private dwellings located in apartments with three or more units,” the outlet reported. And it would also apply to vaping and even marijuana in private dwellings, The San Francisco Examiner reported. 

Bill sponsor Supervisor Norman Yee, said in a tweet that the goal of the bill was to “help residents avoid being exposed to secondhand smoke in their own homes.” And to power grab whenever possible.

“Smoke easily moves between units and buildings. Now that more of us work from home, it’s more important than ever because there is no way to contain it,” Yee yapped. 

This bill will not affect other addicted folks such as heroin-only addicts. The will continue to be provided with clean needles and pats on the back.

“San Francisco currently bans smoking in the enclosed common areas of multi-unit buildings. Yee’s proposal extends this to the interiors of those buildings’ private homes, as well as to balconies and patios,” Reason reported.

People who violate the ban will first receive a warning shot across their brow. Then if their addiction causes them to light up or vape, they could face fines up to $1,000 but on a positive note, if they can still afford the rent, they will not be evicted.

The way San Francisco is headed, people who waste water flushing their toilet by refusing to "let it mellow when it's yellow," may eventually pay stiff fines.

If San Francisco's budget shortfall of $1.7 billion isn't satisfied this year, as the intelligentsia continue to abandon the decaying city, you can bet they will brilliantly come up with the solution to raise city taxes and lose even more people.

“During the first year of the ban, the Department of Public Health would also be required to run a “multilingual and culturally responsive public information campaign to raise awareness of the smoking prohibition and cessation resources,” Reason reported. “Sixty-three California cities have implemented similar bans. Yee’s proposal is endorsed by the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, the American Heart Association, the San Francisco Tobacco-Free Coalition, all of which have issued letters in support,” not including dictators Nicolas Maduro and Kim Jong Un.

C'mon, man, gimme a break. You know you want to follow Brain Flushings--it's free and worth every penny. And remember, every time you click on an ad, an angel gets its wings and a liberal sheds a tear. C'mon.

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Trey Gowdy: Samantha Power claims others unmasked in her name

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power testified that the hundreds of unmasking requests made in her name, were made by other people. This was discovered by House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and revealed in an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier on "Special Report with Bret Baier,"

"Her testimony is they may be under my name, but I did not make those requests," Gowdy said of Power. She is one among those in the Obama administration who made requests to identify Americans whose names surfaced in foreign intelligence reports, known as unmasking.

 It was reported by Fox News last month that Power was unmasking at an incredibly rapid pace in the final months of Obama's leftist presidency. She averaged over one request for every working day last year and even went so far as to seek information in the days leading to Trump's inauguration.

Gowdy told Bret Baier, "I think if she were on your show, she would say those requests to unmask may have been attributed to her, but they greatly exceed by an exponential factor the requests she actually made. So, that's her testimony, and she was pretty emphatic about it."

Then he added, "So we've go to get to the bottom of that. If there is someone else making requests on behalf of a principal in the intelligence community, we need to know that because we're getting ready to reauthorize a program that's really important to the country, but also has a masking component to it."

Power was interviewed Friday for a closed-door session with House Intelligence Committee investigators looking into the 'unmasking' of Trump associates under the Obama crowd.

So who's to blame for allowing someone else to use her name to violate the rights to privacy of U.S. citizens? And if it was done with such frequency, why wasn't Powers directly questioned by the judicial authority that grants such requests?


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Mom shamed by school for cake in daughter's lunch box

First they nastygrammed about a kid's school lunch, then they nastygrammed about his dirty underwear. When will it stop?

An Australian nastygram has gone viral.

A mother, who obviously loves her 3-year-old daughter, put a slice of chocolate cake in her school lunch bag. How horrible!

The cake set off an alarm, flagging the delicious desert as a violation of the school's mandatory healthy foods policy. The cake was flagged in the shuddersome "Red Food Category," which lists foods "that may contain excess energy (kilojoules), saturated fat [Michael Moore], added sugar and/or salt."

The mother discovered how terrible she was when her daughter returned home with a note from the teacher that was topped with a sad face and said: "Your child has chocolate slice from the Red Food category today. Please choose healthier options for Kindy."

'Kindy' refers to kindergarten in Australian.

A friend of the warned mommy, Melinda Tankard Reist, (who is also an author and advocate for women and girls) went on Facebook to support her friend. She posted a photo of the note and wrote: "My friend (mother of 8 healthy children, what follows relating to no. 7) received this today from her 3 year old's kindy. I told her to put in two slices tomorrow and tell them to get lost."

The post received hundreds of shares and over 800 comments.

One commenter wrote: "I'm quite sure the mother knows it has sugar . . . the mother is NOT in kindergarten . . . the teacher is chastising the parent here! Plus makes the child feel bad . . . shame on the teacher . . . it's not every day I am sure."

Another wrote: "Perhaps tell them that they are breaching our privacy by looking. Quote privacy legislation--no right to judge my lunchbox."

Today it's the lunch boxes . . . tomorrow, our skivvies. It must end now!


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Hillary demands their passwords "and your little dog's too"

First she came for the passwords, but I didn't have a password, so I did nothing.
Then she came for the family's passwords, but I didn't have a family, so I did nothing. 
Then she came for my mobile phone and there was nobody left to save my mobile phone because they were all too busy playing Pokemon on theirs.

But seriously, those Democrats who Hillary Clinton was vetting for the VP slot were required to turn over every password for every social media account for every member of their families.

Next they had to list every single property they had ever owned, copies of every resume they used over the past 10 years, every business partner and every gift they ever received.

If Hillary Clinton had to do that herself, she'd be in prison for life. What hypocritical crap.

The finalists were then questioned for five weeks with follow-ups and more follow-ups on their responses and were called upon individually to meed with campaign chairman John Podesta and James Hamilton. They were instructed to bring along just one trusted person who would serve as the point of contact.

The Clinton final exam of those special VP candidates was held at the luxurious Clinton home in Washington D.C., paid for by foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation, an organization created to serve the needs of those in need named Clinton.

Podesta sat by his boss Hillary Clinton as she asked the first highly probing and original question: "Why do you want this job?"

"I'll get you and your little dog too"

Once the interviews were over and the winner of the "VP prize" was decided, she didn't call the finalists herself as she isn't quite sure how to negotiate an actual phone call--she usually has a secretary do that menial stuff--some were called by Podesta who would tell the poor schlub that they had decided "to go in a different direction." He also called congressional leadership to announce that they selected Tim Kaine, and Podesta was the one to call Bernie Sanders, not Clinton.

Hillary invited Kaine and his wife to her Chappaqua, NY home for lunch with all the Clinton clan to see how they'd get along. When she determined that Kaine was as easily bought as she, there was no question that he was her guy, and perhaps Anne Kaine would be Bill's gal. 

But imagine the idea of Hillary "Private Server" Clinton having candidates for VP give her all their passwords and those of their families. I know candidates need to be vetted, but let's face it, that never really happened with the Clintons.


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If You Think Monitoring our Phonecalls will Stop Terrorism, I Have a Bridge to Sell You in Brooklyn

Do you want total privacy and freedom or are you willing to allow the government to place some restrictions on liberties we'd taken for granted on September 10, 2001? The current NSA scandal, where we've learned that they've been keeping Verizon phone records, puts that question right in the forefront of the public.

The president is telling us that our safety would be compromised with complete privacy because we'd be keeping the NSA from watching the "bad guys" if we don't allow them to have access to our phone records and emails. Not that they would be listening in on our conversations, but they would know who was calling the "bad guys," where they called from, and how long the conversation lasted. This would alert them to a possible terrorist attack, they say.

Privacy Piracy

You can't swing a cat without hitting someone on a cell phone, either on a call, texting, or listening to Lady Gaga singing something semi-annoying. It's surreal to see three or four people walking along, apparently having a schizophrenic episode, where each is talking to an invisible person, speaking out loud about such things like: who's dating whom, who's sleeping with whom, who's coming to the party at Tommy's tonight, what you think about Mary and Billy now that Mary is pregnant with Stevies child and Billy has just come out of the closet and his mother doesn't know it yet, and so on and so on. Then you realize these people who you thought were crazy, are all on cell phones using Blue Tooth techology and you have the epiphany that privacy has been pirated by our modern toys and past times.

Making a call was simple back then

Cell phones have come a long way since the days when they looked like military radios used to call in air strikes against the Luftwaffe. Not only are they sleek, thin, and light, they can play music, go online, text, take photos, do the math, store thousands of phone numbers and personal information, and even record messages. One thing that cell phones could do, that the cell phone companies didn't advertise so much, is their ability to physically track your whereabouts through an internal GPS (Global Positioning System) that is now accurate within three feet of your location.


But this is only one aspect of how our privacy has been pirated by others.

Facebook and other social media sites know more about you, in many ways, than your own family. But Facebook isn't Faceless, it's a site where people can read all about you, and other companies can learn about your preferences and shopping habits. This is also true with internet providers who can track your web address travels and share it with their advertisers. Flickr, the photography site owned by Yahoo, displays your personal photos, and if you don't secure your privacy on this site, it can be pirated by anyone coming across your location.


We complain about our lack of privacy, but it is we who give it away freely. We're the one putting out our information, and then we're surprised when someone steals it and uses it to steal even more from you.  

Post-truck accident with dismembered hand

There are, of course, situations where your information is literally stolen from you using electronic piracy. I'm referring to those devices that can read your credit card information and the thief can use your account to buy anything from toilet water to islands in the Caribbean. That's why I bought an "As Seen on TV" aluminum wallet for a mere $9.99. It's so strong a truck can run it over and it still keeps on walleting. If it happens to be in your pocket when the truck runs over it, well, who cares, eh? But those electronic credit card readers cannot zap your wallet's contents and read your card--until you take it out of your wallet to actually use your card to pay for something, which, to my way of thinking, may be a flaw in the idea. Besides, those aluminum "As Seen on TV" wallets can't hold very much--maybe one credit card, a library card, health card, and a paper dollar.


I'm no security expert, but I understand the importance of our personal privacy--some things just aren't anyone's business. 

If you are interested in terrorism and suspense, I have provided 2 links (below) for a hard copy (soft cover) edition and an eBook edition of my latest novel, Jihad Joe.  It's a story about Zed Nill, a New York based reporter, taken hostage by Islamic terrorists.  He must escape, or be beheaded the following day . . . the clock is ticking.

click here for softcover Jihad Joe                     

click here for ebook version

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