Facebook’s willingness to agree to a voluntary code of conduct in  Germany to protect users’ data shows it is mindful of how the culture  there contrasts with that in the U.S. 
  At  home, even though Facebook began last December using facial recognition  to catalog users’ faces so as to automatically make tag suggestions  when photos are uploaded, it took a good six months for any substantive 
criticism  of the biometrics feature to surface. There’s only occasional media  attention in the U.S. now on how the issue raises privacy and identity  theft concerns. 
  The story has played much differently in Germany, where the country's  federal data protection laws are among the world’s strictest. 
  A few weeks ago, the State of Schleswig-Holstein had ordered all state  sites to remove Facebook's "like" button, and threatened to impose hefty  fines on those that didn’t. It said Facebook builds profiles of users  and non-users alike with the "like" button's data, which violates German  law. 
  And in early August the head of the German data protection authority asked Facebook to 
disable its facial recognition feature and argued that facial recognition amounts to unauthorized data collection on individuals.   
http://www.pcworld.com/article/239822/facebooks_selfregulation_in_germany_a_bow_to_stric  ter_culture.html