Australian hardware chain Bunnings Warehouse will challenge a ruling by local regulators who found it violated shoppers' privacy by checking their ide

Hardware barn denies that .004 seconds of facial recognition violated privacy

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2024-11-19 06:00:03

Australian hardware chain Bunnings Warehouse will challenge a ruling by local regulators who found it violated shoppers' privacy by checking their identities with facial recognition tech.

Australia's privacy commissioner Carly Kind on Tuesday found "Bunnings collected individuals' sensitive information without consent, failed to take reasonable steps to notify individuals that their personal information was being collected, and did not include required information in its privacy policy."

The chain's sin was in using CCTV to capture the face of everyone who entered 63 of its stores between November 2018 and November 2021.

"Individuals who entered the relevant Bunnings stores at the time would not have been aware that facial recognition technology (FRT) was in use and especially that their sensitive information was being collected, even if briefly," stated commissioner Kind.

"The electronic data of the vast majority of people was processed and deleted in 0.00417 seconds – less than the blink of an eye," stated Bunnings managing director Mike Schneider in a company statement.

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