Gus Hurwitz on Wegmans’ Use of Facial Recognition and Consumer Privacy
ICLE Director of Law & Economics Programs Gus Hurwitz was quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer article examining controversy over Wegmans’ use of facial recognition technology and whether shoppers’ biometric data may be collected without clear notice or consent. Read the full article here.
Biometric surveillance is becoming increasingly common but is not yet widespread, said Gus Hurwitz, senior fellow and academic director of the Center for Technology, Innovation, and Competition at Penn’s Carey Law School.
Companies that use biometric surveillance do so for a number of reasons, but seldom tell consumers what their data is being collected for. Data collection can help companies understand what consumers are purchasing and how they’re moving through stores, Hurwitz said. Biometric data collection can also be used for dynamic pricing, when retailers change prices in real-time depending on a number of factors, including time of day, demand, weather, and consumer behavior.
Hurwitz said it’s important to distinguish between real-time and non real-time biometric screening. Non real-time screening has been happening for decades in the form of security cameras and other data collection tools, often used for market research purposes.
Hurwitz said we’re “still very much in the development era of these sorts of technologies,” and that he expects more and more government entities to hone in on regulating them in the near future.