Popular N.J. supermarket now using facial recognition. Is your store watching you?
If you’re a Wegmans shopper, Big Brother may be watching you.
The supermarket chain said it’s starting to use facial recognition technology in some stores.
Wegmans addressed its strategy after signs were posted in some Brooklyn and Manhattan stores, warning customers the technology is being used to “protect the safety and security of our patrons and employees.”
Wegmans did not reply to questions from NJ Advance Media about whether facial recognition is being used in its New Jersey stores, and if so, at what locations.
But in a statement on its website, the Rochester, New York-based company said it was being used only “in a small fraction" of stores that “exhibit an elevated risk.”
Controversies and concerns over the use of facial recognition in supermarkets were spotlighted last month in an NJ Advance Media report after a ShopRite customer complained he was wrongly tagged as a shoplifter.
That shopper said he mistakenly left the Sussex store without paying for water after confusion at the checkout counter. The next time he visited the location, a “loss prevention” employee approached him aggressively, he said.
“This guy was bobbing and weaving and walking circles around me and my wife,” the shopper said. “He opens up the folder and there is my ‘mug shot’ — a 3-by-4 photo — with receipts and pictures of my cart.”
The customer paid for the items in question, but worried that he’d forever be in the grocery chain’s system as a threat.
Unlike the reports of the New York Wegmans locations, the Sussex ShopRite had no signs telling customers the technology was being used.
A bill in Trenton, still awaiting a committee hearing, would ban retailers from using the technology except for a legitimate safety purpose, defined as “any purpose reasonably likely to reduce the risk to life or safety of any person.”
The measure was introduced after a New Jersey attorney was banned from Radio City Music Hall after facial recognition technology identified her as someone on its parent company’s “attorney exclusion list".
“I firmly believe that individuals should not be subjected to this level of surveillance when they present no security risk,” Sen. Kristin Corrado, R-Passaic, the bill’s sponsor, told NJ Advance Media.
The Wegmans system “collects facial recognition data and only uses it to identify individuals who have been previously flagged for misconduct,” the company said in its statement.
Source: Article: Popular N.J. supermarket now using facial recognition. Is your store watching you? - nj.com
