Rite-Aid Outed For Using Facial Recognition Tech

The news agency Reuters recently posted a story outlining and confirming how the U.S. drugstore chain Rite-Aid had been using facial recognition technology – cameras and AI algorithms – to monitor customers in some of its stores in New York City and L.A. The computer vision tech was being used mostly in lower-income, non-white neighborhoods as a counter-measure to theft, looking for known or suspected criminals. 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.