Dutch supermarket warned against using facial recognition for theft prevention
A Dutch supermarket, whose name has not been made public, deployed a facial recognition system at its entrance to identify suspected thieves and other threats. The Dutch Data Protection Authority warned the store on December 15, 2020, that this practice would violate Dutch privacy rules and the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), as customers had not given explicit consent. The store claimed it had found a regulatory loophole, but the regulator rejected this argument, stating that the system's indiscriminate recording and analysis of all customers was not in the public interest. The store's name and whether it can appeal the decision remain unknown.
- Date it happened
- 2020-12-15
- Organisation involved
- Unnamed Dutch supermarket (possibly Jumbo)
- Product, system or model
- Facial recognition system
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