An alliance led by civil rights group Fight for the Future wants businesses to stop using facial recognition technology and names the perpetrators.
More than 35 groups – including Access Now, Data for Black Lives, Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, and others – joined forces last month for the “In-Store Facial Recognition Ban,” a campaign urging retailers to end the practice. Its latest scorecard aims to pressurize Macy’s, Apple, Lowe’s, and grocery stores HEB Grocery and Albertsons to stop scanning shoppers and workers.
“Companies say they offer facial recognition in the name of ‘convenience’ and ‘personalization,’ but their real priorities are protecting and predicting their profits and ignoring how they abuse people’s rights and put them at risk,” Caitlin said Seeley George, campaign manager at Fight for the Future, in prepared statements.
“Businesses using or considering facial recognition should heed this call from dozens of leading civil rights and racial justice organizations representing millions of people,” she continued. “Retailers should commit to not using facial recognition in their stores so that we can stand up for their decision or be prepared for an onslaught of opposition.”
According to the coalition, tech manufacturers accelerated the use of facial recognition during the pandemic, calling it helpful for things like contactless payments or measuring temperatures. It also pointed out that a recent offering from payment company Stripe radically simplifies adding to websites with just three lines of code.
But it is clear that the print campaign is weighing on the retail sector.
The groups researched or contacted the major U.S. retailers to ask if they were using facial recognition technology, and then based on the results created a scorecard that covered and counts 29 companies.
“We plan to add more of the country’s leading retailers to this list of retailers so that people can contact these additional companies and pressure them to put their customers ‘and employees’ rights, privacy and safety first,” Seeley George said in a statement to WWD.
Specifically, Walmart and Target are listed as “Won’t Use” while Macy’s, Apple and the rest are logged as “In Use”.
Macy’s was brought before a class-action lawsuit in Chicago last year accusing the company of violating Illinois biometric privacy law by using related software to scan shoppers. Apple’s status stems from another lawsuit in which someone alleged that incorrect facial recognition resulted in incorrect identification as a shoplifter not once but several times.
That’s one of the reasons critics have blown the technology.
“Detroiters know what it feels like to be watched, followed by surveillance cameras with facial recognition,” Tawana Petty, national organization director for Data for Black Lives, said in the announcement.
Petty stated that Project Green Light, a mass surveillance program in Detroit, is deploying more than 2,000 flashing green security cameras in more than 700 businesses, including hospitals, public housing and restaurants. The cameras use facial recognition and connect to crime centers, police stations and officers’ mobile devices around the clock.
“It’s hard to explain the psychological toll it takes on a community knowing that your every move is being monitored by a racially biased algorithm that can steal your freedom,” she added.
Bias is a deeply sensitive issue in the tech sector. Smartwatches, for example, have had a difficult history of carefully reading darker skin tones for sensor-controlled health or fitness traits, while claims of bias in artificial intelligence have multitudes of corporate committees, action groups, and lawmakers investigating the problem.
As far as the scorecard is concerned, Amazon, whose Amazon Go stores are peppered with cameras and sensors, is noticeably absent.
“Amazon is largely not a stationary retailer, [so] we didn’t include them on the list even though the company is one of the largest retailers in the US, ”added Seeley George. “Nonetheless, we have and will continue to fight Amazon’s use of surveillance technology, including facial recognition, in their stores, warehouses and workers, and who they sell.”
The e-retailer has denied the use of facial recognition technology at Amazon Go locations in numerous comments to the media over the years. But the use of palm scanning technology raises privacy concerns similar to other initiatives.
Fight for the Future specifically protests against Amazon’s partnership with law enforcement agencies. “In over 1,400 cities across the country, Amazon gives law enforcement agencies warranty-free access to request and store footage from thousands of ring cameras,” says its website. “This mass surveillance gives the police unprecedented power.” The group aims to raise awareness and put public pressure on local elected officials to withdraw from these partnerships.
It is a different approach than that of the alliance, which does not only rely on the action of politicians.
Seeley George stated that tech companies themselves are demanding regulation, albeit industry-friendly versions. “[They] are not doing enough to keep people safe, “she said. For example, getting consent to collect biometric data assumes that people understand “the full harm” and most don’t. Also, some consumers may not have a choice of shopping elsewhere depending on their location or income.
“There is no way to regulate privacy and rights first when the technology is inherently invasive,” she said. “That’s why we’re calling on retailers to make a commitment not to use facial recognition technology, and we are also calling on lawmakers to pass laws to protect people from companies that use facial recognition.”
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