NEW YORK — Smile! You are on camera.
For shoppers at the New York supermarket chain, that message is a lot more like: Customers’ “biometric” information can be collected.
As a way to stop shoplifting, the Upper West Side place of well-known New York grocer Fairway is applying facial recognition technologies and other biometric collection tools, such as voice recording, to catch repeat offenders.
Privacy issues arose soon after a sign was posted on the front of the retailer: “This company collects, retains, converts, retailers or shares facts about customers’ biometric identifiers, which is facts that can be applied to determine or help in identification.”
According to Fairway in a statement, the technologies “assists our retailer minimize retail crime.”
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The news comes as shoplifting continues to rise across the nation. Retailers such as Walgreens, Target and Walmart have retailers in specific cities mainly because of this.
“This is not a city exactly where you can stroll into a retailer, get what you want and stroll out,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams stated in response to the city’s developing complaints about shoplifting. In New York, complaints rose to a lot more than 63,000 final year.
Dozens of key retailers are reportedly applying facial recognition to catch shoplifters, such as entertainment venues such as Initial Power Stadium in Cleveland, the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., and Citi Field in New York.
“It is quite, quite, quite, quite tricky to obtain a needle in a haystack, so to speak, in a big venue or big events,” stated Scott Spiro, a cybersecurity specialist and co-founder of Sugarshot. “So I consider you happen to be going to continue to see technologies distributed.”
Not too long ago, the owner of Madison Square Garden came below fire for applying facial recognition to determine and eliminate folks.
“There are positives and negatives, there are large, large positives for the police,” Spiro continued. “On the unfavorable and worrying side, we have a actual challenge potentially about how that information is applied, specifically if it gets into the incorrect hands.”