The American company Facebook has lost the first round of the litigation initiated by a number of users who consider that collecting their biometric data is illegal, reports TASS with a reference to Reuters. The presiding judge in the Federal District Court of California dismissed a countersuit filed by Facebook lawyers seeking to close the case.

Earlier, several residents of Illinois filed a lawsuit against Facebook, arguing that Facebook collects and stores biometric data using face recognition function that suggests the users to tag the pictures. In their opinion, it violates the current Illinois law on access to the biometric information and privacy (Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act).

Facebook tried to close the case by filing a countersuit , claiming that users can not go to court with complaints of Facebook based on the law of the State of Illinois , as the user’s agreement requires all arising disputes be resolved within the framework of the laws of California. In addition , Facebook lawyers tried to prove that nothing is said in this document about “the  suggested tags " . However, the judge decided that the Illinois law is applicable for the case.

Last month another suit was filed against Facebook to prevent the issue of new category shares that would allow the head of the company Mark Zuckerberg to sell the lion's share of the ordinary shares , while retaining full control over Facebook, one of the world's most popular social networks.