The facial recognition technology stopping shoplifters
Retailers are using facial recognition technology to identify and deter shoplifters in stores. The BBC reported on how this surveillance tool is being deployed in commercial settings to flag individuals flagged as past offenders.
Why this matters: Every customer who walks into a store using this technology gets scanned, not just the people who have stolen something. That means your face is being checked against a database before you have done anything wrong. Facial recognition makes mistakes, and those mistakes tend to fall hardest on people of color. Retailers do not need to tell you this is happening, and you generally have no way to know if you are on a watch list or why. Stopping shoplifting is a real problem. Building a biometric dragnet out of every shopper to solve it is a serious tradeoff that most people never agreed to.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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