Rite Aid hit with five-year facial recognition ban over ‘reckless’ use

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Rite Aid isn’t allowed to use AI-powered facial recognition technology for another five years as part of a settlement it reached with the Federal Trade Commission. In a complaint filed on Tuesday, the FTC accuses Rite Aid of using facial surveillance systems in a “reckless” manner from 2012 to 2020.

During this period, the FTC says Rite Aid used facial recognition technology to “capture images of all consumers as they entered or moved through the stores.” It then allegedly created a database of customers identified as shoplifters or exhibiting some other kind of suspicious behavior. For some customers, the database would have “accompanying information,” such as names, birth dates, and the activity deemed suspicious by the store,...

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