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AIAAIC-0617

Walgreens fails to gain customer facial recognition consent

US pharmacy chain Walgreens has been accused of unlawfully collecting and storing photographs of customers’ faces using cameras equipped with facial recognition technology. Defendant Leroy Jacobs argued in a class-action lawsuit (pdf) that Walgreens failed to disclose to customers that images of their faces were being collected and stored without their consent, despite being required to do so under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). Walgreens’ biometric data collection practices exposed customers to a heightened risk of identity theft and fraud given biometric identifiers cannot be changed if compromised, the suit argues. System 🤖 Walgreens website Operator: Walgreens Developer: Country: USA Sector: Retail Purpose: Identify shoplifters Technology: Facial recognition Issue: Privacy; Security Transparency: Privacy Legal, regulatory 👩🏼‍⚖️ Jacobs v Walgreens (pdf) Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) 2008

Date it happened
2020-10-01
Organisation involved
Walgreens
Where this came from
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This incident was imported from AIAAIC and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.

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