Rite Aid Has Been Using Face Recognition at Hundreds of Stores

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Rite Aid Has Been Using Face Recognition at Hundreds of Stores

Rite Aid used face recognition to scan the faces of every single customer who walked into hundreds of its stores in a program encompassing most of the past decade, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

The program spanned eight years, two vendors, and was implemented in 200 stores—a disproportionate number of which were located in non-white, low-income neighborhoods. CCTV cameras would record everyone entering those stores. Then their faces would be analyzed and added to a unique “profile,” though customers were very likely unaware of its existence. Managers could also approve Rite Aid loss prevention (security) staffers to add individuals they found to be suspicious or potentially engaged in criminal activity to a watch list. Any time an individual the system identified as on the watch list entered the store, as well as prompted to check for accuracy. They could then take action such as asking the person to leave.

Reuters visited all 75 Rite Aid locations in Manhattan and central Los Angeles from October 2019 to July 2020, finding face recognition systems in 33 of them. Stores located in impoverished neighborhoods or which had high populations of non-white people were several times more likely to have the cameras:

Stores in more impoverished areas were nearly three times as likely as those in richer areas to have facial recognition cameras. Seventeen of 25 stores in poorer areas had the systems. In wealthier areas, it was 10 of 40. (Ten of the stores were in areas whose wealth status was not clear. Six of those stores had the equipment.)

… Of the 65 stores the retailer targeted in its first big rollout, 52 were in areas where the largest group was Black or Latino, according to Reuters’ analysis of a Rite Aid planning document from 2013 that was read aloud to a reporter by someone with access to it. Reuters confirmed that some of these stores later deployed the technology but did not confirm its presence at every location on the list.

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Rite Aid Has Been Using Face Recognition at Hundreds of Stores