Woolies plans facial recognition trial in two Canberra supermarkets
Woolworths is planning to trial facial recognition technology across two of its supermarkets in Canberra, Australia. The pilot represents one of the more prominent tests of biometric surveillance in Australian retail to date.
Why this matters: Grocery shopping is about as ordinary as life gets. Woolworths wants to scan your face while you do it. That is a significant step. Facial recognition in retail is usually pitched as loss prevention, but it builds biometric databases of ordinary shoppers who have done nothing wrong. Australia has patchy rules around this kind of data. If the trial expands, millions of people could be identified and logged every time they buy groceries, with little say in the matter and no clear account of where that data goes or who can access it.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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