Woolworths plans facial recognition trial in two Canberra supermarkets
Woolworths is planning to trial facial recognition technology in two of its supermarkets in Canberra, Australia. The pilot would make the grocery chain one of the more prominent retailers to test biometric surveillance on everyday shoppers.
Why this matters: Going to buy groceries should not mean submitting your face to a database. Woolworths has not announced what data gets stored, who can access it, how long it is kept, or what happens when the system misidentifies someone. Retailers tend to frame these trials as loss-prevention tools, but the people being scanned are mostly ordinary customers who have done nothing wrong. Australia has real privacy laws. The question is whether regulators will actually apply them before the trial becomes permanent policy.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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