Jeffrey Dastin writing for Reuters:
The cameras matched facial images of customers entering a store to those of people Rite Aid previously observed engaging in potential criminal activity, causing an alert to be sent to security agents’ smartphones. Agents then reviewed the match for accuracy and could tell the customer to leave.
Rite Aid deployed facial recognition systems in hundreds of U.S. stores
The DeepCam systems were primarily deployed in “lower-income, non-white neighborhoods,” and, according to current and former Rite Aid employees, a previous system called FaceFirst regularly made mistakes:
“It doesn’t pick up Black people well,” one loss prevention staffer said last year while using FaceFirst at a Rite Aid in an African-American neighborhood of Detroit. “If your eyes are the same way, or if you’re wearing your headband like another person is wearing a headband, you’re going to get a hit.”