Federal regulators say the pharmacy retailer Rite Aid used a facial recognition system that falsely flagged some Asian, Black and Hispanic customers as potential criminals.
The Guardian reports a settlement reached between the Federal Trade Commission and the chain bans Rite Aid from using facial recognition for five years.
Investigators say the technology had been in place from 2012 and 2020 at hundreds of stores in New York City; Los Angeles; San Francisco; Philadelphia; Baltimore; Detroit; Atlantic City; Seattle; Portland, Oregon; Wilmington, Delaware and Sacramento, California.
The FTC found the store didn’t put “reasonable procedures” in place to protect innocent customers from undue scrutiny.
According to Forbes, the government agency said Rite Aid “falsely tagged consumers, particularly women and people of color, as shoplifters.”
Reuters previously reported that Rite Aid implemented facial recognition in mostly low-income neighborhoods.
That system ended up generating thousands of false positives, CNBC reported. Security detained or search those identified as potential criminals and falsely accused them of committing a crime. Others were banned from the store and prevented from making any purchases.
CNBC reports the false positives were most likely to occur in Asian and Black neighborhoods than in predominantly White neighborhoods. Rite Aid generated its data base from images from security camera footage, driver’s licenses and government IDs. The store entered at least 10s of thousands of people into its facial recognition system.
“We respect the FTC’s inquiry and are aligned with the agency’s mission to protect consumer privacy, the company said in a statement. “However, we fundamentally disagree with the facial recognition allegations in the agency’s complaint.”
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