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from the There-are-two-eyes-in-"Rite-Aid" dept.
Reuters: Rite Aid monitored customers using facial recognition cameras
Over about eight years, the American drugstore chain Rite Aid Corp quietly added facial recognition systems to 200 stores across the United States, in one of the largest rollouts of such technology among retailers in the country, a Reuters investigation found.
In the hearts of New York and metro Los Angeles, Rite Aid deployed the technology in largely lower-income, non-white neighborhoods, according to a Reuters analysis. And for more than a year, the retailer used state-of-the-art facial recognition technology from a company with links to China and its authoritarian government.
In telephone and email exchanges with Reuters since February, Rite Aid confirmed the existence and breadth of its facial recognition program. The retailer defended the technology's use, saying it had nothing to do with race and was intended to deter theft and protect staff and customers from violence. Reuters found no evidence that Rite Aid's data was sent to China.
Last week, however, after Reuters sent its findings to the retailer, Rite Aid said it had quit using its facial recognition software. It later said all the cameras had been turned off.
It's a very long article:
Reuters pieced together how the company's initiative evolved, how the software has been used and how a recent vendor was linked to China, drawing on thousands of pages of internal documents from Rite Aid and its suppliers, as well as direct observations during store visits by Reuters journalists and interviews with more than 40 people familiar with the systems' deployment.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Wednesday July 29 2020, @08:28PM (5 children)
So how many others are using or have been using facial recognition?
Do/did local laws actually allow the use of facial recognition technology? (It seems like there have been no rules about that until recently)
Did anyone know they were being recorded/aggregated/tracked using facial recognition?
Are there currently any rules requiring stores businesses to alert people they are being tracked using facial recognition? (Yea, ha, ha, not likely)
These days I'd assume that anywhere there is a camera, there is facial recognition too. In any kind of business, your face, purchase, credit card, whatever else they collect, will be associated together and tracked across stores.
This will be used for a variety of things such as refusing service to people they don't like, targeted advertising, recording if you bought pseudoephedrine to helpfully keep you from buying "too much" even if you go to a different store, emailing you and your wife with a survey asking if you like those sexy panties you bought for your secret girlfriend, and MUCH, MUCH more to come!
Places like Rite Aid/Walgreens/Krogers are already evil shit as they require tracking cards to buy things. ("What, no they don't REQUIRE them, you just pay a bit more, but why would you not want to sell your privacy for a few bucks off?!"). If only all of these kinds of stores would die a horrible and miserable death.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday July 29 2020, @08:46PM (1 child)
From your lips to the ears of heaven.
I will and do pay more rather than deal with this insane nonsense but more and more that's not even an option, at any price. In a sane world, the victims would sue this company, win a judgement well in excess of their market cap, send them to bankruptcy court, and collect every penny that could generate. In a separate action, a group of attorneys general would be obtaining criminal convictions on their executive team and board of directors, with every single one of them going to prison for life without parole at the end. This would then allow them to pierce the corporate veil and go after those officers personal wealth for restitution.
Of course we don't live in a sane world. These criminals will probably retire with giant golden parachutes, while their victims don't even get a complimentary tube of lube.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Touché) by shortscreen on Thursday July 30 2020, @03:04AM
But with our luck they'd be replaced by Amazon.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 29 2020, @08:59PM (2 children)
Even facial recognition was off the legislatures' agenda until very recently.
They have absolutely no laws about technology that can teleport small quantities of matter across distances of ~1 meter, imagine the possibilities of such a device placed at the entrance to a high traffic public building:
implantation of tracking chips
tissue samples taken
injection of biological agents...
Lawmakers will probably be quick to regulate a technology like that, just like they were for UAVs that can deliver hand grenades almost anywhere, but apparatus of the surveillance state like facial recognition? Gosh golly gee, we're gonna have to study that for a while before we decide what we should do (implicitly allowing the commercial market to burgeon and development to flourish...)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Thursday July 30 2020, @03:29AM (1 child)
Reference please. I'm intrigued.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 30 2020, @12:47PM
Science fiction - great way to impregnate thousands of women in a single day...
🌻🌻 [google.com]