Rite Aid Falsely Accused Shoppers Of Theft Using Faulty Facial Recognition Tech, FTC Says

The chain can't use the technology for five years following allegations that it misidentified people, especially minority customers, as potential shoplifters.

Rite Aid has been banned from using facial recognition technology for five years after the Federal Trade Commission alleged that the company’s surveillance system misidentified customers as potential shoplifters.

The ban came as a settlement was reached Wednesday between the government agency and the drugstore chain.

From October 2012 to July 2020, Rite Aid used facial recognition technology to identify shoppers that “it had previously deemed likely to engage in shoplifting or other criminal behavior,” the FTC said in a federal court complaint.

But because of low-quality images that came from security cameras or employee phone cameras, thousands of shoppers were wrongly identified as shoplifters, the agency said. It added that store employees would follow customers they believed to be involved in theft and order them to leave or threaten to call the police.

At other times, employees would accuse people in front of their friends and family, according to the complaint. In one incident, store employees searched an 11-year-old girl, the FTC said.