Kmart, Bunnings and the Good Guys under fire for using facial recognition technology.
Kmart, Bunnings and the Good Guys have come under fire for their use of facial recognition technology on customers have now been referred for potential privacy breaches.
Major Australian retailers Kmart, Bunnings and The Good Guys are using facial recognition technology in stores, raising concerns among privacy experts.
The use of this developing technology, which captures and stores unique biometric information such as facial features would come as news to most customers. Choice asked 25 leading Australian retailers whether they use facial recognition technology and analysed their privacy policies. Based on the policies and the responses received, Kmart, Bunnings and The Good Guys appear to be the only three that are capturing the biometric data of their customers.
“Most of these privacy policies you have to search for online, and they’re often not easy to find,” says CHOICE consumer data advocate Kate Bower. “But because we’re talking about in-person retail shops, it’s likely that no one is reading a privacy policy before they go into a store.”
Bower says the Kmart and Bunnings stores they visited had physical signs at the store entrances informing customers about the use of the technology, but the signs were small, inconspicuous and would have been missed by most shoppers.
The collection of biometric data in such a manner may be in breach of the Privacy Act.
Choice canvassed more than 1000 Australians in a nationally representative survey to gauge consumer awareness of facial recognition technology.
The results indicate that most people are in the dark. More than three in four respondents (76%) said they didn’t know retailers were using facial recognition.
This lack of awareness doesn’t mean people aren’t concerned. Most survey respondents (83%) say retail stores should be required to inform customers about the use of facial recognition before they enter the store, and 78% expressed concern about the secure storage of faceprint data.
Almost two thirds of respondents (65%) are concerned about stores using the technology to create profiles of customers that could cause them harm.
Some survey respondents describe facial recognition technology as “creepy and invasive”. Others say they consider it “unnecessary and dangerous” and wouldn’t want to enter a store that’s using it.
We don’t have a clear set of regulations or guidelines on the appropriate use of the technology Professor Mark Andrejevic, Monash University said. “I think the other set of concerns is we don’t have a clear set of regulations or guidelines on the appropriate use of the technology. That leaves it pretty wide open. Stores may be using it for the purposes of security now, but down the road, they may also include terms of use that would say that they can use it for marketing purposes.”
Edward Santow is a professor at the University of Technology Sydney who focuses on the responsible use of technology. As a former Australian Human Rights Commissioner, he also led work on artificial intelligence. Santow says facial recognition technology raises serious questions for our society.
“Even if that technology was perfectly accurate, and it’s not, but even if it were, it also takes us into the realm of mass surveillance,” he says. “And I think there will be great concern in the Australian community about walking down that path.”
