Bart Custers discusses fake news on facial recognition at Jumbo
Misleading social media posts are falsely claiming that the Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo uses facial recognition at self-service checkouts. Jumbo denies this, although it has launched trials with AI cameras to combat shoplifting without using facial recognition.
Facial recognition technology is prohibited in almost all situations in the Netherlands, says Bart Custers, Professor of Law & Data Science at eLaw, Center for Law and Digital Technology, in an interview with French news agency AFP. As long as nothing extremely serious is going on in a supermarket, the use of facial recognition is not likely to be a proportionate measure.
The use of this technology would be possible subject to permission, but placing a sign at the entrance to be supermarket would be woefully inadequate. If individuals cannot be identified from the images – only silhouettes or thermal images, for example – then this would not constitute personal data collection and would be permissible.