Barred From Grocery Stores by Facial Recognition British merchants
| Barred From Grocery Stores by Facial Recognition British merchants | |
|---|---|
| Short Title | Facial Recognition Used by UK Retailers |
| Location | United Kingdom |
| Date | June, 2023 |
| Solove Harm | Surveillance, Aggregation, Identification, Exclusion |
| Information | Behavioral, Criminal, Ethnicity, Family, Identifying, Physical Characteristics, Preference, Sexual, Social Network, Knowledge & Belief, History |
| Threat Actors | Private retailers |
| Individuals | |
| Affected | Customers, Shoplifters and problematic customers |
| High Risk Groups | People |
| Tangible Harms | Anxiety, Change of Behavior, Embarrassment, Lost Opportunity, Loss of Trust |
Facial recognition technology, such as Facewatch, is increasingly used by private retailers in the UK to identify shoplifters and problematic customers, raising concerns about privacy, potential misidentifications, and the normalization of surveillance.
Description
The article discusses how private retailers in the UK are increasingly using facial recognition technology, particularly a system called Facewatch, to address minor offenses like shoplifting. Facewatch allows stores to share a list of flagged individuals, notifying store employees when someone from the list enters a participating store. With nearly 400 stores using Facewatch, it employs facial recognition to identify individuals based on a watchlist created from uploaded photos of known shoplifters. However, critics express concerns about privacy and proportionality, especially regarding potential misidentifications.
In the context of Solove Taxonomy, the deployment of Facewatch raises privacy issues. Continuous surveillance through Facewatch falls under "Surveillance," potentially impacting customers' daily privacy. The aggregation of multiple videos during surveillance aligns with the "Aggregation" concept, risking the collection of sensitive information. Facewatch's identification mechanism, while aiming to link with known faces, may introduce errors, like recognizing siblings of shoplifters, leading to unnecessary associations, representing the "Identification" aspect. Furthermore, errors in Facewatch could exclude innocent individuals, barring them from stores even without any wrongdoing, fitting into the "Exclusion" taxonomy.
Laws and Regulations
Sources
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/28/technology/facial-recognition-shoplifters-britain.html