Nathan Davies: Maybe they could bring back the checkout operators and aisle staff that once deterred shoplifters instead

No one likes thieves but when do we speak up against business giants taking our privacy for their own needs, writes Nathan Davies.

When you pop into Bunnings on a Sunday morning to pick up a can of semi-gloss (but actually to get a sausage with onions to ward off that dustiness from one too many Saturday night ales), are you having your mug scanned by facial recognition software?

And later that day when you duck into Kmart to get that throw rug your wife saw in the catalogue and a six-pack of those socks you like, are they too analysing the bone makeup of your mush? Well, yes, according to research conducted by Australian consumer group Choice.

Choice says Bunnings, Kmart and electronics retailer Good Guys have all rolled out facial recognition technology at selected stores in an attempt, the stores say, to crack down on shoplifting.

And, sure, no store likes losing stock to thieves – and it’s us, the customer, that ends up paying more in the end to cover the losses – but questions need to be asked around just how much privacy people are willing to give up for the sake of a multinational’s bottom line.

The Bunnings store in Mile End, Adelaide. Picture: David Mariuz

Are we OK with AI scanning and storing our image? If not, we should probably be speaking out now because these trends, once established, tend to run in one direction.

The Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology certainly thinks we shouldn’t be OK with it. In fact, the influential think tank wants to see a moratorium on the practice.

“The government should implement the recommendations from the Human Rights Commission report Human Rights and Technology, which calls for a moratorium on facial recognition technology until safeguards are put in place,” the centre’s boss Peter Lewis said.

“Reports today from Choice show facial recognition technology is being deployed without necessary safeguards and red lines to protect the public. It’s not good enough for a business to say that it is implementing this technology to crack down on theft without the public knowing the way the data is being collected, how it’s being stored, what it’s being used for and whether it’s being sold on to other parties.

“We need comprehensive privacy law reform and a pause on implementation of this potentially harmful and invasive technology. The recommendations of the AHRC for a moratorium should be implemented.”

There will be plenty out there who will flippantly remark, “well, if you’ve got nothing to hide then why would you worry?”

Well because, as the Institute pointed out, we don’t know exactly what this data is being used for right now and what it could be used for in the future.

USA actor Tom Cruise in scene from film "Minority Report" 14 Jun 2002. /Films/Titles/Minority/Report

Pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong were not covering their faces, shining lasers and wielding umbrellas for fashion reasons, they were doing it to stop their faces being stored on government databases. Likewise, controversial facial recognition “search engine” Clearview AI is, apparently, being used in Ukraine to identify the dead on both sides.

And, yes, it is a stretch to compare the use of technology by authoritarian regimes or military outfits with how it might be used at the hardware store, but if it makes us uncomfortable, then now is the time to speak up.

To some extent we have all played a role in this by voluntarily uploading so much about ourselves to the internet. And most of us are using our faces or fingerprints now to unlock our phones and access internet banking. So while the good ship that was the HMAS Privacy has probably sailed, we can let Bunnings, Kmart, Good Guys and any other retailers rolling out facial recognition know that we would rather not have our visages monitored without our permission, or at least without some very clear guidelines around exactly what they are doing with that data.

And if the big box stores really want to reduce shoplifting maybe they could reverse the policies that took checkouts away from the store exits and put them in the middle, forcing customers to present their receipts on the way out like suspected criminals.

Human intelligence beats artificial intelligence every time, so rather than rolling out creepy technology that makes a weekend visit to the shops feel more and more like a scene out of Minority Report, maybe those shops could bring back the checkout operators and aisle staff that once provided so many jobs, gave people the opportunity to have human conversations and, by their very presence, deterred the shoplifters.