Cadillac Fairview collected 5 million shoppers’ images without consent

Cadillac Fairview collected five million shoppers’ images without their consent, according to an investigation by the federal, Alberta and B.C. Privacy Commissioners. 

The investigation found that 12 shopping malls across Canada used facial recognition through embedded cameras inside digital information kiosks, a press release said. 

Cadillac Fairview said that images were collected to “analyze the age and gender of shoppers and not to identify individuals.”

The company said shoppers were “made aware of the activity via decals it had placed on shopping mall entry doors that referred to their privacy policy.” The commissioners determined that doing so was insufficient. 

The company also noted that it did not collect personal information “since images taken by camera were briefly analyzed then deleted,” however the investigation found that personal information was collected and that Cadillac Fairview contravened privacy laws by failing to obtain meaningful consent. 

The investigation also noted that the company used video analytics to collect and analyze sensitive biometric information of customers. It noted that while images were deleted, they were stored in a “centralized database by a third party.”

“Shoppers had no reason to expect their image was being collected by an inconspicuous camera, or that it would be used, with facial recognition technology, for analysis,” said Daniel Therrien, Privacy Commissioner of Canada, said in the release.

“The lack of meaningful consent was particularly concerning given the sensitivity of biometric data, which is a unique and permanent characteristic of our body and a key to our identity.” 

Therrien recently stated that the country’s privacy laws are not robust enough to protect Canadians. He called on the government to take action in amending the privacy act, which hasn’t been done since 2015.

The release noted that the company removed cameras in response to the investigation and does not have any plans to reinstall the technology. It added that all information associated with video analytics has been deleted and the company has confirmed it will not retain or use the data for any other purpose. 

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Yahoo Finance Canada has reached out to Cadillac Fairview for comment but did not get a response in time for publishing. 

More to come.

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