Rite Aid is banned from using facial recognition technology for surveillance purposes for the next five years.
That’s to settle charges against the retailer by the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC.
The FTC said the “retailer failed to implement reasonable procedures and prevent hard to consumers in its use of facial recognition technology in hundreds of stores” from 2012 to 2020.
The federal complaint said as a result, the retailer wrongly flagged consumers, particularly women and people of color, as matching a previous troublemaker based on facial recognition technology that falsely flagged them.
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Rite Aid said it’s pleased to reach an agreement with the FTC.
The company added in a statement, “We respect the FTC’s inquiry and are aligned with the agency’s mission to protect consumer privacy. However, we fundamentally disagree with the facial recognition allegations in the agency’s complaint. The allegations relate to a facial recognition technology pilot program the Company deployed in a limited number of stores. Rite Aid stopped using the technology in this small group of stores more than three years ago, before the FTC’s investigation regarding the company’s use of the technology began.”
Rite Aid said its mission has and will continue to be to safely and conveniently serve the communities where stores are located.
NBC CT Responds
In a statement, Samuel Levine, the director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said, “Rite Aid's reckless use of facial surveillance systems left its customers facing humiliation and other harms, and its order violations put consumers’ sensitive information at risk. Today’s groundbreaking order makes clear that the Commission will be vigilant in protecting the public from unfair biometric surveillance and unfair data security practices.”
