Facial recognition trial targets repeat offenders in New Zealand supermarkets
Foodstuffs South Island is running a facial recognition trial to reduce violent and threatening behaviour in stores, storing detections for seven years within the Auror platform.
Teenagers account for most of the serious threats reported against supermarket staff across South Island stores, according to a privacy report released on Foodstuffs South Island’s facial recognition trial.
The company is testing the technology in three Christchurch supermarkets to identify only adult repeat offenders, rather than minors, even though six out of the ten worst offenders are under eighteen.
A system that creates a biometric template of every shopper at the trial stores and deletes it if there is no match with a watchlist. Detections remain stored within the Auror platform for seven years, while personal images are deleted on the same day.
The technology is supplied by the Australian firm Vix Vizion, in collaboration with Auror, which is already known for its vehicle plate recognition systems.
Foodstuffs argues the trial is justified by rising threatening and violent behaviour towards staff across all age groups.
A previous North Island pilot scanned 226 million faces and generated more than 1700 alerts, leading the Privacy Commissioner of New Zealand to conclude that strong safeguards could reduce privacy intrusion to an acceptable level.
The watchlist only includes adults previously involved in violence or serious threats, and any matches undergo human checks before action is taken.
Foodstuffs continues to provide regular updates to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner as the South Island trial proceeds.
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