Facial Recognition Trial

What are we doing?

For our customers’ safety and the safety of our team members, we are trialling facial recognition technology (FRT) at some of our stores to help us reduce the recurrence of harmful behaviour incidents (being crime, violence and threatening or aggressive behaviour). The trial will be taking place in 12 Rebel Sport stores and is intended to run for up to six months. Each store will have clear signage at the entrance.

We have seen a significant increase within stores in relation to assault (physical and verbal) and other aggressive, violent and threatening behaviour towards our team members and/or customers. We consider this type of behaviour as a harmful behaviour incident, and where a person has been involved in such incidents, they will be trespassed and added as a person of interest to our FRT database. With the use of FRT we hope to prevent harm to our team members and customers, making our stores a safe place to work and shop.

The stores participating in the trial are:

· Rebel Sport Atrium

· Rebel Sport Hastings

· Rebel Sport Wairau Park

· Rebel Sport the Base

· Rebel Sport Henderson

· Rebel Sport Botany

· Rebel Sport Morningside

· Rebel Sport Rotorua

· Rebel Sport Newmarket

· Rebel Sport Panmure

· Rebel Sport Porirua

· Rebel Sport Mt Roskill

 

What is facial recognition technology?

FRT is a system that uses cameras to capture and analyse facial features of people's faces, in real time, against our database of those involved in a harmful behaviour incident instore. The FRT system will analyse facial features and converts them into an encrypted biometric code. This code is anonymous and cannot be reverse engineered back into a photo.

All images are automatically deleted where a match against our FRT database is not found; the matching process typically takes less than a second to occur. Only the biometric code of those who are involved in a harmful behaviour incident will be securely saved and stored (for up to two years). Your original facial image is not stored.

To be enrolled into the FRT system as a person of interest, a person must have been threatening, violent or aggressive, offended multiple times, tried to steal a significant amount of product, or committed a crime.

No images or biometric code of minors, vulnerable people, or non-offenders will be kept in our FRT system, nor will they be added to our FRT database.

 

How does facial recognition work?

When a person enters a trial store, their facial features will be captured by one of our cameras a biometric code created from it and the biometric code is then compared to our database of individuals who have previously been involved in a harmful behaviour incident.

If there is no match found, the image of the person entering will be immediately and automatically deleted.

An individual who has previously been involved in a harmful behaviour incident in our stores, will have their image added into our FRT database for up to two years. Any details of the incident may also be added into our database, this could include their name, should we know it. If the person then tries to re-enter our stores, as part of the trial, they will be detected where a match rate is at least 95%. If a match is found to an image in our database, two specially trained staff will verify it, and then choose the most appropriate course of action. Both team members will need to agree it is a match before taking any further action.

 

What about Privacy?

We take the privacy of our customers very seriously and we have been keeping this at the forefront of our FRT trial. There is a fine balance between providing a safe environment for our team members and customers and being respectful of everyone’s privacy, and it is important we get that right. We have reviewed our solution against both the NZ Privacy Act and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s proposed Biometrics Processing Privacy Code , to ensure compliance with their requirements.

Our FRT systems are subject to strict access controls, with only authorised and specially trained team members having access. Furthermore, these team members are required to keep information confidential.

No images nor biometric code of minors, vulnerable people, or non-offenders will be captured and saved in our FRT systems and database.

No information from our FRT systems will be shared with third parties, unless this required to run and evaluate the trial, or by law.

The purpose of this trial is to help detect those individuals who are causing harm to the people in our stores.

For more information on our approach to privacy, find our privacy policy here.