A Māori mum misidentified as a trespassed “thief” at a Rotorua supermarket trialling facial recognition technology says she felt “racially discriminated” against and embarrassed during the “horrible” birthday incident.
The store is part of a six-month trial of facial recognition technology in 25 of Foodstuffs’ North Island supermarkets, which is being monitored by the Privacy Commissioner.
The technology scans customers’ faces and compares these images to those on the store’s databases of known offenders or suspects.
She said on the evening of 2 April, her 47th birthday, she stopped in with her teenage son to buy chops to go with fried rice from a Chinese takeaway.
She said two male staff approached her in the meat section and one got “literally in [her] face” and loudly told her: “You have been trespassed and you need to go”.
She said they insisted she leave, even when she offered photo identification.
Solomon said the “horrible” ordeal went on for about 10 minutes before she and her son left the store without the chops, and she broke down in tears in the carpark.
She said she felt helpless and the incident “ruined what was until then a wonderful birthday”.
Consumer New Zealand’s chief executive Jon Duffy said the use of this technology was “highly invasive” from a privacy perspective, “like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut”.
“Many New Zealanders don’t have a choice where they shop which means they may be forced to give up their data, whether they like it or not.”
Sue sue sue! They keep phrasing this like the problem is that maybe the systems can be inaccurate as the primary problem. But if they were perfectly accurate their existence and deployment in this context is still a travesty. Supermarkets aren’t police, they have no right to do this, if I go shopping I’m not volunteering to participate in a lineup. These types of systems are some of the more egregious examples of a larger trend of accepting private companies taking on powers that are only supposed to be tolerated when wielded by the state, I don’t want to live life like an inmate, offering you my custom should not be rewarded in this way.
I mean, they do have the right to keep people out of their store, they’re under no obligation to provide goods or services to anyone. The issue is how they went about it.
Looking at community law, it looks like they only have the right to ask you to leave AFTER they have trespassed you, before that you have the legal right to be in the store.
Since this lady in fact had not been trespassed previously and they (probably) didn’t serve her a notice during the incident, she would seem to be well within her rights to say prove that it is me, and not leave/call the police to sort it out.
Whilst supermarkets are private property, they are not the same type of private property as your house. They need grounds to refuse entry/ask you too leave, there are all kinds of discrimination implications if you remove the need to have grounds to refuse service.
I didn’t realise that actually, although it makes sense given how important a supermarket is.
In most towns in New Zealand there is only one supermarket. I don’t see how they would have the right to trespass you. Where are you going to get your food from?
That’s also my issue with it, in as much as how they went about it was installing a facial recognition system. Damn things ought to be illegal.
I don’t really see the difference between that and having someone watch the cameras, to be honest.