NZ Facial Recognition Trial was Privacy-Compliant, Watchdog Reports
Supermarket Foodstuffs North Island's (FSNI) trial use of facial recognition technology (FRT) complied with New Zealand's Privacy Act, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner announced Wednesday. While the level of privacy intrusion was high because the faces of everyone who entered the store were collected, privacy safeguards reduced intrusions to an acceptable level, it said.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
The company piloted FRT between February and September 2024 in some of its supermarkets. The Privacy Commissioner ran an inquiry alongside that pilot, the office noted. During the trial, 225,972,004 faces were scanned (including multiple scans of the same person) with 99.999% deleted within one minute; and there were 1742 alerts of which 1208 confirmed matches.
The investigation report, which found FSNI in compliance with the law, was specific to the operation of FRT during the trial, with the privacy protections FSNI used during the trial a key factor in that finding, the office said. Its inquiry identified further improvements FSNI must address before it considers using FRT permanently or expanding it into additional supermarkets.
The findings will help other businesses "ask the right questions about whether FRT is necessary and appropriate for them" and understand what they would need to do to deploy FRT and run it in a privacy-protective way, the office said.
In May, the office published a facesheet about using FRT. Among other things, it recommended:
- Thinking carefully about the specific purpose of FRT before deploying it.
- Setting up and maintaining a watchlist by defining the target group in line with your purpose.
- Notifying customers clearly about FRT and how they can access and correct information.
- Ensuring there is human intervention to check alerts before acting on them.
- Having clear objective intervention criteria that avoids the risk of bias.
- Having a system for managing complaints or access and correction requests.
- Ensuring FRT systems and information are secure.