Convenience store sued for using cameras with face recognition | Hacker News Reader

Convenience store sued for using cameras with face recognition

bbc.co.uk

15 pointsmysto4 comments

> "The supermarket is adding customers to secret watch-lists with no due process, meaning shoppers can be spied on, blacklisted across multiple stores and denied food shopping despite being entirely innocent," said Big Brother Watch's director Silkie Carlo.

To opt-out, one simply chooses to not shop at that business. Also, to avoid biometric recognition, one would have to protect their identity, in essence covering their face while in public. In the age of Covid-19, wearing a face mask is considered to be quite sensible, but also has the added perk of increasing privacy.

> "This is a deeply unethical and a frankly chilling way for any business to behave."

It's not deeply unethical, and it's certainly far from imoral. Having security cameras is a sensible activity. Having people who monitor security cameras is a sensible activity. Having those people monitoring the cameras remember past security incidents is sensible. Automating the whole process is reasonable.

It's intellectually dishonest to proclaim a system is unethical simply because it's more efficient at detecting unwelcome guests than a typical human would do anyways. It's like saying it's unethical to not allow cheating.

Voting with your feet has always been a BS argument, as will be "you can just choose not to shop here" after this behaviour is normalised across stores. Live facial recognition of any kind on cameras should not be legal unless we want to turn into another China.

Automating the whole process is precisely where it goes beyond reasonable. Automation makes it too easy to apply facial recognition constantly (which a physical guard would not do, or would only do after the fact by reviewing the recordings). Automation also ensures that the facial data is capable of being stored indefinitely, and that's unethical regardless of legality.

I agree fully. Bring one the age of FR.

Call me dystopian but if, for example, I were an immigrant run business and I wanted to turn down anti-immigration politicians at my establishment to send a message, I would absolutely use this.

Also, it feels skeeezy when my local mom and pop supermarket plasters photos everywhere of banned customers/shoplifters. Feels like you’re asking customers to do the work of policing each other.

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