Sydney (Reuters) -On Tuesday, Australia’s second-largest appliance store chain said it was stopping a test of facial recognition technology in stores after a consumer group brought it to the attention of the privacy regulator, which could take action.
The group CHOICE told the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner that the way The Good Guys, which is owned by JB Hi-Fi Ltd, used the technology was “unreasonably intrusive” and might have broken privacy laws (OAIC).
A spokesperson for JB Hi-Fi said in an email that The Good Guys will stop testing the upgraded security system with optional facial recognition technology in two of its Melbourne stores.
The company took the privacy of personal information very seriously and is still confident it followed the law. However, it decided “to stop the trial for now until the OAIC clarifies how this technology can be used,” it said.
In a complaint, The Good Guys were named along with Australia’s biggest home improvement store, Bunnings, and the local version of the big box store, Kmart. Both of these stores are owned by Wesfarmers Ltd. and make about A $25,000 billion in sales each year across 800 stores.
Bunnings could not be reached right away for a response to The Good Guys’ move.
When CHOICE filed its complaint a day earlier, Bunnings said it only used the technology for security because the number of “challenging interactions” its team had to deal with had gone up. It also said that CHOICE was “misrepresenting the facts.”
The Good Guys also said that they only used the technology to look into thefts and make sure that customers and their teams were safe and healthy.
When asked by email about the complaint, Kmart did not answer.
The OAIC has said that the complaint is being looked at.
Last year, the Australian government told the 7-Eleven chain to get rid of “faceprints” that were taken at 700 stores using iPads set up for customer surveys.
It also told Clearview AI, a company in the United States that uses images from social media sites to build profiles of people, to destroy data and stop doing what it does in Australia.