New York
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The biggest chains in America are using facial recognition technology to try to stop shoplifting. But most customers are unaware their faces are being scanned while they shop.
Facial recognition isn’t new — it’s been controversially used for over a decade. Despite widespread disdain for the technology’s use in the United States (it’s more common at UK stores), its adoption continues to grow in American stores with few rules and uncertain results.
One constant: When people get wind of it, they revolt.
Look no further than the uproar this week over Wegmans, the supermarket chain know n for its cult-like following. The company angered some shoppers by revealing it uses facial recognition technology at New York City stores.
New York City is one of the few places in the country that requires commercial establishments to disclose if they collect or retain biometric information on customers. The city’s law, enacted in 2021, also prohibits businesses from selling or sharing the biometric information they collect. New York State lawmakers have proposed banning businesses from using facial recognition, but legislation has stalled.
To comply with New York City’s law, Wegmans recently posted signs near the entrances of its stores in Manhattan and Brooklyn notifying customers that they may have data on their face, eyes and voices collected and stored. “We use facial recognition technology to protect the safety and security of our patrons and employees,” the signs said.
The signs, first reported by the news website Gothamist, generated enough attention from media and customers to cause the notoriously media-shy Wegmans to issue a rare public statement.
“In a small fraction of our stores located in communities that exhibit an elevated risk, we have deployed cameras equipped with facial recognition technology,” Wegmans said Wednesday.
Wegmans said the tech identifies people previously flagged for “misconduct” and is used only for security.
New York City is an exception, however, to policies in most of the United States.
There is a lack of oversight, transparency and bias with facial recognition technology, said Jeramie Scott, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Without federal, state or local regulations to protect civil liberties, the powerful technology can be abused, he said.
“A lot of the facial recognition technology is happening without our knowledge,” he said. “We haven’t clearly addressed how we’re going to handle the use of biometrics, particularly the use of facial recognition. The law hasn’t caught up.”
Rite Aid and Madison Square Garden
Police departments and law enforcement have used facial recognition technology for more than a decade. But it has spread to stores and entertainment venues over the past few years.
Retailers typically have watchlists of people that have been suspected of or caught shoplifting, and facial recognition software generates alerts to employees that someone off a list has entered a store.
Wegmans is just one of many big US retailers that now use facial recognition technology, often without customers’ direct knowledge. Walmart, Kroger and Home Depot rely on it, according to their privacy policies, to name a few.
“Biometric surveillance has grown more sophisticated and pervasive, posing new threats to privacy and civil rights,” the Federal Trade Commission said in 2023.
The federal government and vast majority of states don’t regulate biometric information, making it difficult to identify private companies that use it for things like facial scans on people entering stores.
However, the technology has been misused, even generating false identifications and wrongful arrests.
Rite Aid in 2023 agreed to a five-year ban from using facial recognition technology after the Federal Trade Commission found that the chain falsely accused customers of crimes and unfairly targeted people of color.
“Rite Aid’s failures caused and were likely to cause substantial injury to consumers, and especially to Black, Asian, Latino, and women consumers,” the FTC said.
It’s also been used to block people from attending sporting events and concerts in New York City.
MSG Entertainment, the owner of Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall, has used facial recognition to enforce an “attorney exclusion list” of lawyers who represent people it and keep them away from games and concerts.
“Probably virtually every large and medium-sized retailer is using biometrics,” said Adam Pollock, an attorney representing the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against the New York Mets over biometric data collection at Citi Field.
The companies themselves don’t like to talk about it, he said, because “Americans are pretty universally squeamish about facial (and) biometric recognition.”
