Retail Companies Testing In-Store Facial Recognition

This gives me the creeps, but here goes. Several large retailers are beginning to install facial recognition cameras in their stores!

By Admin on August 17, 2018
(Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

This gives me the creeps, but here goes. Several large retailers are beginning to install facial recognition cameras in their stores!

BuzzFeed News reports, “Retailers are turning to facial recognition software to identify potential thieves by comparing scanned images of shoppers’ faces against a database of known shoplifters. But as more retail stores consider using the technology, privacy advocates and industry stakeholders are debating how the technology should be regulated and how shoppers should be informed about when their faces are scanned.

“We don’t want to live in a world where government bureaucrats can enter in your name into a database and get a record of where you’ve been and what your financial, political, sexual, and medical associations and activities are,” Jay Stanley, an attorney with ACLU, told BuzzFeed News about the use of facial recognition cameras in retail stores. “And we don’t want a world in which people are being stopped and hassled by authorities because they bear resemblance to some scary character.”

The exact number of retailers using facial recognition cameras in their stores is unclear. But Peter Trepp, the CEO of the facial recognition software company FaceFirst, told BuzzFeed News that “hundreds of [retail] locations, growing to thousands very soon” have been outfitted with the company’s facial recognition software as part of their stores’ overall security systems. FaceFirst declined to share details about its retail clients, citing nondisclosure agreements with the companies.”

Freaked out yet? Read the rest at BuzzFeed News.

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