Foodstuff New Zealand protects the use of facial recognition

Consumer and civil rights groups are questioning the results of facial recognition tests conducted by New Zealand supermarket chain Foodstuffs. A retailer is deploying technology in its stores to prevent retail crime.

One of the main concerns with the technology is the accuracy of recognizing the faces of darker-skinned minorities. According to independent consumer watchdog Consumer NZ, the Foodstuffs study did not collect information on the ethnicity of people falsely identified by facial recognition. The retailer also did not provide information on how it reported the statistics about the mistaken identity, The New Zealand Herald reports.

Foodstuff says its approach to matchmaking was consistent with a study from the US Commission on Civil Rights. When the system detects a match, two specially trained team members must still agree that a match has been made before further intervention is initiated.

“The software we use was designed and developed in Australia by an Australian organisation. They use multiple data sets from around the world, including local data from Polynesian, Indigenous Australian, Asian, African American and American groups,” says Foodstuffs.

The Foodstuff test was developed and independently tested by the research company Scarlatti and concluded in September The results are currently being reviewed by the Privacy Commissioner, Michael Webster, who plans to announce the results by the end of 2024.

New Zealand’s facial recognition debate will also affect other firms, including the criminal intelligence platform Auror which recently raised $48.7 million to finance its global expansion.

At the same time, Foodstuff has faced criticism from legal experts and groups such as the New Zealand Civil Liberties Council over other issues, including a lack of informed consent, data privacy and hacking risks.

The company says its system automatically and immediately removes images of shoppers if their images don’t match the store’s record of “criminals and accomplices.” The firm also addressed the issue of minors, noting that images of minors are not entered into any facial recognition system.

“At the time of the trial, the registered offender datasets were reviewed as part of the trial assessment and no juveniles were identified,” says a spokesperson for the firm.

The retailer announced that it will continue to use facial recognition in the same 25 stores that first tested the technology, using the same privacy protocols and processes.

Topics of articles

biometrics | criminal record | data privacy | facial recognition | New Zealand | retail biometrics | video surveillance