Pharmacy chain Rite Aid deployed facial recognition technology in hundreds of store locations in the nation's largest cities, particularly in low-income neighborhoods predominantly home to people of color, a new report has found.
Reuters today published
an in-depth report citing internal documents, interviews with more than 40 sources familiar with the systems, and first-hand observation of cameras in stores, which found the technology was deployed in at least 200 stores, including 75 identified in New York and Los Angeles. Whenever a customer entered a store that uses the tech, their image was logged in a database. On return visits, the software added new images to existing customer profiles. It then ran those images against a list of "people Rite Aid previously observed engaging in potential criminal activity." When the software made a match, store security employees received a smartphone push notification. Rite Aid declined to identify which store locations used the technology, but Reuters journalists in Manhattan and Los Angeles were able to spot 33 in 75 stores.
Among those 75 stores, Reuters found, stores in poorer areas were significantly more likely than stores in higher-income areas to have facial recognition in use—68 percent of the stores Reuters visited in lower-income areas had it, as compared to 25 percent of the stores in wealthy neighborhoods. In areas where Black or Latinx residents made up the largest demographic group, Rite Aid locations were more than three times as likely to be using facial recognition as in predominantly white neighborhoods.
One of the tools Rite Aid reportedly used was DeepCam, which is connected to Chinese state investment funds.
arstechnica.com
