A judge has allowed a $32B lawsuit to proceed that claims Apple Photos face recognition violates Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The suit conflates Apple’s approach with that of Meta, despite the two companies’ methods being at opposite ends of the privacy spectrum.

In 2015, Meta faced a similar BIPA case in Illinois for using face recognition on its servers to suggest tags in uploaded photos. The court found that Meta collected biometric data without consent, leading to a $650 million settlement. That decision hinged on the fact that Meta’s processing occurred off‑device and the company could identify faces.

Apple’s implementation is fundamentally different. As detailed in a 2021 machine‑learning paper, the recognition algorithm runs entirely on the user’s iPhone. Photos only groups images that appear to depict the same person; it never learns or stores who that person is. Names are added solely by the user, and the system never accesses or transmits biometric data to Apple’s servers.

Consequently, the lawsuit rests on a misunderstanding of the technology. Courts and legislators should recognize Apple’s on‑device, privacy‑first design rather than conflating it with server‑based practices. The case highlights a broader pattern of regulators struggling to grasp technologies like end‑to‑end encryption before attempting to control them.