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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: 2) by looorg on Wednesday July 29 2020, @08:33PM (9 children)
While I'm not familiar with the company I have to ask if they available everywhere or are they mainly available in said described neighborhoods? If so then perhaps it's not so strange that they are there and it doesn't have anything to do with racism or whatnot. Do they have any upscale boutiques in affluent neighborhoods to where they sell their drugs (yes I know, not that kind of drugstore) where they didn't use the system? If they don't then this sort of falls flat on the outrage part, even if it checks all the current big brother tags.
It's kind of interesting tho if they had rolled this out more then a year ago and it took this long for someone to snitch to the media, after all many stores, many people doing the installing, even more normal employees, hard to keep the conspiracy secret the more conspirators there are involved.
(Score: 1) by crm114 on Wednesday July 29 2020, @08:52PM (4 children)
Yes, they are everywhere.
In the USA, you'll find a Rite Aid, Wallgreens, or CVS on almost every corner.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday July 29 2020, @09:30PM (3 children)
That statement is more true of EZMart, than of any or all of those drug store chains. I've never had to deal a lot with pharmacies, but locally, you have to drive a ways to find a pharmacy. Every Walmart seems to have a pharmacy, and there's a WalMart in just about every moderately sized town. To find a Walgreens or a CVS, I have to drive to Texarkana. That means that I have 6 WalMarts within 50 miles of my home, and only one Walgreens, and one CVS, and no RiteAid at all.
What is true in my region of the US may or may not hold true in other regions. If you tell us that you have 30 RiteAids, 20 Walgreens, and 50 CVS within a fifty mile drive of your house, I won't argue with you. ;^)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @11:00PM (1 child)
I live in a town of 45K people on the California coast. There is one RiteAid (used to be Thrifty drug), two physical CVS stores (one used to be a Longs drug), and another CVS pharmacy inside the Target store, and zero Walmarts. I think relative concentration of various store brands varies with location in the country.
We didn't have any big box stores, at all, nor dollar stores until pretty recently. And, there isn't much fast food to speak of either (occasionally they open up, but then most close shop pretty quick since not much market for that here / property rents are super high so they would need to do a very brisk business to survive).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @11:44PM
Maybe a food truck could do better?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 01 2020, @12:36PM
In the suburbs, these stores are probably 1-5/sq. mile dropping close to 0/ as you get further from the city. Walmart is ~1/10sqm no matter where you go.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 29 2020, @09:03PM (2 children)
The public facing side of facial recognition looks like ordinary security cameras, indeed, they are ordinary security cameras hooked into special analysis tools - said tools are usually on-site, but out of sight, but theoretically the imagery could be streamed to a central clearinghouse and facial recognition could be run there.
Not surprising for a bunch of new security cameras to appear in a "high loss rate" store. Nothing nefarious about not rolling out the cameras to neighborhoods where "inventory shrinkage" isn't as much of a problem - that's simple cost control.
Interesting that they abandoned the tech, probably just not worth the PR hassle, no matter how well it works.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @02:02AM
Whiners love to whine. Around here there is a periodic bitchfest about food deserts. A grocery will open sooner or later and everyone will applaud the social justice. "Shrinkage" ensues and they eventually hire security guards for all the thefts and robberies. The store will then close down when they finally figure out they are running a free food pantry. The cycle repeats. Nobody learns a thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 30 2020, @04:18AM
Or if the shoplifters get an addition to their record and then released (as in the state of CA),
then RIte-Aid gets no benefit from the system. The shoplifters just return after they are
released and maybe steal more since it does not seem to matter if they get caught.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 29 2020, @09:06PM
There used to be a RiteAid in my neighborhood. It was mostly okay, except there was always a long line to check out, except in the middle of the night (it was open 24/7), so I'd generally go then.
They closed a few years ago and were replaced by a CVS whose prices are *much* higher and the selection much smaller. Not an improvement.
I don't know about other RiteAid locations, but the median home price is USD$1,085,142 [zillow.com] in my neighborhood. Then again, There's public/subsidized housing less than two blocks from the old RiteAid location.
By the way, RiteAid is *huge* (Fortune 100) company with almost 2,500 stores [wikipedia.org]: