Foodstuffs’ expands NZ facial recognition trial, targets retail crime

New Zealand’s Foodstuffs South Island is introducing facial recognition technology at selected stores in Christchurch.

The three-month trial commences this Wednesday, October 29, and includes the stores Pak’nSave Papanui, Pak’nSave Moorhouse and New World St Martins.

“We’re seeing some people repeatedly target our stores with serious, threatening behavior, even after being trespassed,” said Foodstuffs South Island’s Tim Donaldson, general manager of Retail, Wholesale and Property.

“This trial will help us understand if facial recognition can help our teams identify repeat offenders so we can act quickly to prevent them causing more harm.”

In June, New Zealand’s privacy watchdog gave the greenlight to Foodstuffs North Island, which ran a facial recognition trial between February and September 2024. The trial covered 25 supermarkets in which more than 225.9 million faces were scanned.

One of the country’s largest grocery cooperatives, the initiative is part of an effort to address rising incidents of retail crime and ensure a safer shopping environment for customers and staff, according to the company.

In a statement, Foodstuffs South Island said strict privacy safeguards have been built into the trial, including compliance with the Privacy Act 2020, with cooperation with the privacy watchdog and a Privacy Impact Assessment completed prior to the trial’s start.

The system will only match faces against a secure database of individuals previously involved in serious incidents such as assault, abuse or theft. The company says the system does not retain images of individuals who are not on the watchlist, and if no match is found, the image is immediately deleted.

Alerts are triggered only when the system detects a match with a minimum accuracy of 92.5 percent, ensuring a high threshold for reliability. Before any action is taken, matches are manually reviewed and confirmed by two trained staff members. The watchlist again excludes minors and vulnerable individuals. Foodstuffs said after its previous trial that its approach to deciding on matches was consistent with a study from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the trial was designed and tested by an independent third party.

Following the end of the three-month trial, Foodstuffs South Island will evaluate the results before any decisions are made “about future use of FR technology.” On New Zealand’s north island, facial recognition continues to be used in 25 supermarkets with other retailers following suit after the landmark ruling in June.

The Privacy Commissioner Michael Webster ruled the trial was in line with New Zealand’s Privacy Act and that the system was effective in reducing harmful behavior, especially reducing incidents of serious violence. Commenting on this, 3DiVi’s Mikhaylo Pavlyuk said, “It’s worth noting how ‘effectiveness’ is quantified.” The biometrics company’s expert noted that different countries and studies have varying definitions with a 10 to 20 percent reduction (or more) often considered the threshold for an effective method or program.

Following the publication of the results of an inquiry into the north island trial, Webster cautioned that FRT “will only be acceptable if the use is necessary and the privacy risks are successfully managed.”

New Zealand’s Biometric Processing Privacy Code, which became law under the Privacy Act, comes into force on November 3. Under the code, all organizations that collect biometric information for biometric processing will be obliged to assess the effectiveness and proportionality of using biometrics.

Article Topics

3DiVi  |  biometrics  |  data privacy  |  facial recognition  |  New Zealand  |  retail biometrics