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Kmart's use of facial recognition to tackle refund fraud unlawful


The Privacy Commissioner has found that Kmart breached Australians’ privacy by collecting their personal and sensitive information through a facial recognition technology system.

Between June 2020 and July 2022, Kmart deployed FRT to capture the faces of every person who entered 28 of its retail stores, and all individuals who presented at a returns counter, in an attempt to identify people committing refund fraud. The retailer argued that it was not required to obtain consent because of an exemption in the Privacy Act that applies when organisations reasonably believe that they need to collect personal information to tackle unlawful activity or serious misconduct. “I do not consider that the respondent (Kmart) could have reasonably believed that the benefits of the FRT system in addressing refund fraud proportionately outweighed the impact on individuals’ privacy,” the Commissioner stated.

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