A big biometric security company in the UK, Facewatch, is in hot water after their facial recognition system caused a major snafu - the system wrongly identified a 19-year-old girl as a shoplifter.

  • nifty@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    What happens if there’s a consumer boycott of retailers who use this type of harassment tech? It’s disproportionately targeted towards minorities. I think Target was recently bullied into removing Pride items based on consumer action, so clearly mass action has an effect.

    • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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      5 months ago

      Boycotts are almost impossible to pull off successfully. This kind of thing demands legal action. IANAL but the facial recognition company putting her on a list of shoplifters is a claim that she’s a criminal, which sounds like textbook defamation to me.

      • nifty@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        For sure, I meant in addition to suing the banning retailers and the facial recognition tech company

    • phx@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      a) you’d have to know who does it, and you might not until you (or somebody else) gets caught in the net b) boycotts are more effective if there’s choice, which there won’t be if mostly everybody starts using this shyte

    • Doof@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Didn’t it turn out the items where just moved to another area of the store ?