The premier social media titan has a nice little lawsuit on its hands. Carlo Licata from Illinois filed the suit in Cook County Circuit Court this past week, in which he accuses Facebook of secretly amassing the (reportedly) largest privately held database of consumer biometrics data in the world.

Licata’s issues with Facebook arose after the social network added a new feature to their site, which automatically suggests tags on the faces of people with whom you are friends. Facebook hoped that the draw of improving photo tags would please their users.

For those who were not quite as happy about providing more information about their personal lives to Facebook, the ever-evolving social giant did provide a way to allegedly disable the feature on photos of themselves. But according to Licata’s lawyer, this provision did not go far enough. As Jay Edelson, Licata’s attorney told the Chicago Tribune:

If he changed the privacy setting, that wouldn’t change anything because (Facebook) had taken his data and they’re holding on to it. . . there’s no delete button.

Edelson also pointed out that there was an issue of security involved in this case. “If there’s a data breach and hackers get it,” he said, “that would be a total mess.”

One of Licata’s biggest issues with Facebook appears to be lack of choice that users encounter with regards to their privacy. Licata explains that he has been using Facebook since 2009, and throughout those six years, has been tagged in numerous photos by his friends, a normal occurrence for any Facebook user. However, Licata insists that he never gave Facebook permission to collect or store biometric data. In addition, Licata says he was never notified that Facebook was collecting his data, nor was he ever given a way to prevent or prohibit Facebook from storing his information.

As for Facebook itself, they do not seem too concerned. In fact, they are giving an appearance of not even flinching at the case, which they described in a statement as “without merit.” While Facebook plans to “vigorously defend themselves,” they don’t appear to be making any plans to slow down their development on DeepFace. One can only imagine the kind of lawsuits that might incite.

Thanks to Mashable for the report!