A $32.5 billion class-action lawsuit involving the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act and iPhone Photos has been pared down, with the judge partially granting an Apple motion for summary judgment and decertifying one subclass.

In August , a lawsuit surfaced alleging that Apple violated the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act (BIPA). It was claimed that Apple collected biometric data without user consent, via the Photos app.

However, in a September 30 filing by U.S. District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel, the class-action fight has been severely cut back. In a 34-page filing, the judge partially agrees with an Apple motion, while decertifying one of the subclasses in the suit.

The original lawsuit alleges that Photos uses facial recognition technology to scan people's faces and create a " faceprint ." With enough samples, the faceprint is enough for an algorithm to identify the iPhones user and other people, which is then stored by the Photos app.

The real problem is that the photos and associated data is synchronized…