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Canadian Malls Are Using Facial Recognition To Track Shoppers' Age, Gender Without Consent (www.cbc.ca)
At least two malls in Calgary are using facial recognition technology to track shoppers' ages and genders without first obtaining their consent. "A visitor to Chinook Center in south Calgary spotted a browser window that had seemingly accidentally been left open on one of the mall's directories, exposing facial-recognition software that was running in the background of the digital map," reports CBC.ca. "They took a photo and posted it to the social networking site Reddit on Tuesday." From the report: The mall's parent company, Cadillac Fairview, said the software, which they began using in June, counts people who use the directory and predicts their approximate age and gender, but does not record or store any photos or video from the directory cameras. Cadillac Fairview said the software is also used at Market Mall in northwest Calgary, and other malls nationwide. Cadillac Fairview said currently the only data they collect is the number of shoppers and their approximate age and gender, but most facial recognition software can be easily adapted to collect additional data points, according to privacy advocates. Under Alberta's Personal Information Privacy Act, people need to be notified their private information is being collected, but as the mall isn't actually saving the recordings, what they're doing is legal. It's not known how many other Calgary-area malls are using the same or similar software and if they are recording the data.
That's the problem with companies: too often they only ask if something is legal, and not if something is ethical.
Luckily our laws are the result of the larger ethical debate we as a society have. If enough people feel that something is unethical, we change the laws. Look at the GDPR in Europe. So Canadians: get upset!
The law prohibits private information being collected without consent. The fact that you visited a mall isn't private information. Neither is a software guess at your age and gender. I don't think anything a video camera in a public location can learn about you CAN be considered private information, really.
For it to be private information, the information collected needs to be something provided in confidence. If they're recording your driver's license number, your telephone number or your address, that'd be one thing. But that's really not something they're going to get from your image appearing on a public-facing camera! In fact the only way this can be turned into a privacy violation would be to attach your image to information obtained from elsewhere... and that information isn't a problem (legally) if it was obtained with consent.
So yeah, this really is hyperbole.