Rite Aid Deployed Facial Recognition Systems In Hundreds of US Stores (reuters.com) 36
Rite Aid installed facial recognition technology across 200 stores in the U.S. "In the hearts of New York and metro Los Angeles, Rite Aid deployed the technology in largely lower-income, non-white neighborhoods," reports Reuters. "Among the technology the U.S. retailer used: a state-of-the-art system from a company with links to China and its authoritarian government." From the report: Over about eight years, the American drugstore chain Rite Aid Corp quietly added facial recognition systems to 200 stores across the United States, in one of the largest rollouts of such technology among retailers in the country, a Reuters investigation found. In the hearts of New York and metro Los Angeles, Rite Aid deployed the technology in largely lower-income, non-white neighborhoods, according to a Reuters analysis. And for more than a year, the retailer used state-of-the-art facial recognition technology from a company with links to China and its authoritarian government.
In telephone and email exchanges with Reuters since February, Rite Aid confirmed the existence and breadth of its facial recognition program. The retailer defended the technology's use, saying it had nothing to do with race and was intended to deter theft and protect staff and customers from violence. Reuters found no evidence that Rite Aid's data was sent to China. Last week, however, after Reuters sent its findings to the retailer, Rite Aid said it had quit using its facial recognition software. It later said all the cameras had been turned off. "This decision was in part based on a larger industry conversation," the company told Reuters in a statement, adding that "other large technology companies seem to be scaling back or rethinking their efforts around facial recognition given increasing uncertainty around the technology's utility."
Reuters pieced together how the company's initiative evolved, how the software has been used and how a recent vendor was linked to China, drawing on thousands of pages of internal documents from Rite Aid and its suppliers, as well as direct observations during store visits by Reuters journalists and interviews with more than 40 people familiar with the systems' deployment. Most current and former employees spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they feared jeopardizing their careers.
In telephone and email exchanges with Reuters since February, Rite Aid confirmed the existence and breadth of its facial recognition program. The retailer defended the technology's use, saying it had nothing to do with race and was intended to deter theft and protect staff and customers from violence. Reuters found no evidence that Rite Aid's data was sent to China. Last week, however, after Reuters sent its findings to the retailer, Rite Aid said it had quit using its facial recognition software. It later said all the cameras had been turned off. "This decision was in part based on a larger industry conversation," the company told Reuters in a statement, adding that "other large technology companies seem to be scaling back or rethinking their efforts around facial recognition given increasing uncertainty around the technology's utility."
Reuters pieced together how the company's initiative evolved, how the software has been used and how a recent vendor was linked to China, drawing on thousands of pages of internal documents from Rite Aid and its suppliers, as well as direct observations during store visits by Reuters journalists and interviews with more than 40 people familiar with the systems' deployment. Most current and former employees spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they feared jeopardizing their careers.
Re:in largely lower-income, non-white neighborhood (Score:4, Informative)
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If, indeed, the technology they deployed is as flawed as you imply, then it was simply a bad decision.
Which begs the question, obviously — is it as bad you imply? Are poorer people harder to tell apart generally?
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Only the cheap systems. Higher quality and better trained algorithms don't seem to have the issue, as demonstrated by installations in South Africa and the Shell installations in Nigeria.
Having said that, Rite Aid, being a retail store, almost certainly wouldn't have sprung for a top of the line system.
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IAMPSP (physical security professional), so I pay attention to developments throughout the field. I worked for a security installation company for eight years, we refused to do retail or home installs because the margin was so low that the only way to make any money at it was to do shit work with shit equipment and get the the frack out and on to the next job.
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That sounds racist... Are they, though?
If the technology, as TFA darkly suggests, was obtained from a company "with ties to China", then it probably is not true — because Chinese aren't White, and any AI, that can only distinguish Whites, is useless to them.
Re: in largely lower-income, non-white neighborhoo (Score:2)
Why?
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Yeah, it's weird that they would put facial recognition in the stores where it would have the most problems identifying people correctly....
But as it happens, "they all look alike" now applies to everybody. The masked bandit did it!
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Re:in largely lower-income, non-white neighborhood (Score:4, Informative)
The reporters compared two shops with the same "medhigh" (medium-high) theft rate. The one in the poorer neighborhood got surveillance. the one in the better off neighborhood did not. To quote TFA:
One spot ranked "MedHigh" was a store at 741 Columbus Avenue in New York’s whiter, wealthier Upper West Side. Another was the pharmacy’s West 125th Street store in nearby Harlem, a majority African-American neighborhood. The Harlem store got facial recognition technology; the Upper West Side one did not, as of July 9.
Really? (Score:1)
This is smart? (Score:1)
This is just like how A&E canceled it's #1 show, 'LivePD', because someone implied it might be racist, then lost half their viewers and half their income. I guess they don't have stockholders to hold them accountable.
Re:This is smart? (Score:4, Informative)
Live PD was repetitive. Literally more than half the show was cops pulling over a car full of black men and busting them for pot possession.
It certainly said a lot about the priorities of the US justice system, but you could just watch reruns over and over to get the same effect, since every show was basically the same.
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Irrelevant. It attracted and held viewers, which means it got ratings, which means it sold advertising, which means it earned revenue for the company. And someone, somewhere chose to give up that revenue without a clearly defined business justification for doing so. (No, "Because the show made blacks look bad!" does not count, and "Because everyone hates cops right now!" is demonstrably untrue.) That opens them to all sorts of uncomfortable questions from both shareholders and employees.
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Irrelevant. It attracted and held viewers, which means it got ratings, which means it sold advertising, which means it earned revenue for the company.
You may have no personal values beyond mammon, but life is actually much more complex than that for many.
We don't think your ostensible leaders lack of any qualification beyond reality TV reflects on all of you either.
Re: This is smart? (Score:2)
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So driving while intoxicated is a non-issue to you? It sort of matters to me while I'm out walking or on my motorcycle. And I do smell weed coming out of cars around NYC all the time.
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So driving while intoxicated is a non-issue to you? It sort of matters to me while I'm out walking or on my motorcycle. And I do smell weed coming out of cars around NYC all the time.
I'm personally more afraid of the alcoholics than the stoners, but that is fair comment. I don't think LivePD had much in the way of blue states at all, so no idea where NYC police budget goes. I doubt it is better but that is for another conversation.
Reason? (Score:2)
TFA implies, it is wrong... (Score:2, Troll)
I don't understand, why TFA and the write-up imply, Rite-Aid was wrong to use the technology...
Why?
And now they're fucked (Score:3)
Everybody's wearing a mask and their cameras don't work.
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Re: And now they're fucked (Score:2)
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Not necessarily.
https://slashdot.org/story/20/... [slashdot.org]
Hanwang Vice President Huang Lei says the system's recognition rate reached about 95% when people wore a mask -- still some way below its regular success rate of 99.5%
In other words (Score:2)
"This decision was in part based on a larger industry conversation," the company told Reuters in a statement, adding that "other large technology companies seem to be scaling back or rethinking their efforts around facial recognition given increasing uncertainty around the technology's utility."
In other words it doesn't work. Whether that's because it can't recognize black people or because recognizing a face has nothing to do with reducing theft is really irrelevant. I could see the argument for having a single camera at the door that flags people who have been banned from the store but that's it. That would actually be less of a 'privacy' issue than posting banned people's faces on the Scarlet wall as is often done.
I doubt it really paid for itself (Score:2)
Something tells me it was subsidized by their gov't because that's a lot of technology and maintenance for something that probably didn't get a legitimate match often enough.
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All it takes is one person high enough in the pecking order to spend a pile of money.
like every camera system (Score:2)
All the good quality camera systems have some sort of image analytics. So there are probably many camera systems out there that have some sort of "facial recognition" ability. Pretty soon, all camera systems would have that, the same as they are all IP based.
Its the way of the security world, and in canada at least, you can record people in the public areas of your business however you like.
To me, its shocking that it made the news just for simply existing. Are people just not aware of how commonplace fancy
Doubt it's a race thing (Score:2)
Cops won't show up for less than 900 taken in CA. (Score:1)
They say the cameras have been turned off (Score:2)
Yeah. I believe that. Of course they've been turned off. Why would they lie?
sarc
biased wording much? (Score:2)
OH THEY MUST BE RACIST THEN. Oh, wait, they put them in the areas with the most crime and thus need for the technology and skin color of the shoppers is a completely separate issue they're tacking on to fit their narrative. I'm shocked. Although a camera doesn't "protect the staff from violence," pepper spray does. And it's cheaper.