The Federal Trade Commission has banned Rite Aid “from using facial recognition technology for surveillance purposes for five years,” according to a December FTC press release. The ban came following the FTC’s finding that the pharmacy retail chain “failed to implement reasonable procedures and prevent harm to consumers in its use of facial recognition technology in hundreds of stores.”
“The company did not inform consumers that it was using the technology in its stores and employees were discouraged from revealing such information,” according to the FTC. Moreover, “Employees, acting on false positive alerts, followed consumers around its stores, searched them, ordered them to leave, called the police to confront or remove consumers, and publicly accused them, sometimes in front of friends or family, of shoplifting or other wrongdoing.”
This ban by the FTC comes following a year of financial, legal, and public relations woes for the pharmacy chain, which include filing for bankruptcy, allegations by the Department of Justice that it “knowingly filed unlawful prescriptions” for opioids, and being listed as one of multiple pharmacy chains that hand over sensitive customer information to law enforcement even in the absence of a warrant.
But there’s another problem raised by this saga.
Namely, that Rite Aid is by no means the only major retail chain that has utilized facial recognition technology in recent years. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the George Floyd riots, many stores were reported to have accelerated their use of facial recognition technology. Although retailers using facial recognition technology and similar biometric identification tools often claim that doing so is important for enhancing consumer experiences and preventing shoplifting, customers generally seem unaware of when and where such technologies are being used.
Even if customers are aware such technologies are being used, given the growing ubiquity of these tools, unless someone lives in a state or city with strong biometric privacy protections, they may have little choice but to have their biometric information collected by retailers.
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At best, this results in countless people being required to allow corporations to track them on an increasingly individualized level as a prerequisite for participation in everyday life. At worst, this situation could lead to poor consumer experiences, misidentification, and even false arrest, as one man alleged in a lawsuit against Apple and the company’s security contractor.
People should demand better facial recognition algorithms. But they should also ask whether there might be less invasive and less potentially harmful ways for retail stores to upsell their customers and get retail theft under control. Perhaps old-fashioned loyalty cards or apps could work for the former? Maybe cities and security guards not tolerating looting would also be a good step.