Foodstuffs South Island will tomorrow begin a three-month trial of facial recognition technology in three Christchurch stores.

The company said the technology will be tested at New World St Martins, PAK’nSAVE Papanui and PAK’nSAVE Moorhouse from Wednesday, 29 October.

Foodstuffs South Island General Manager of Retail, Wholesale and Property Tim Donaldson said the cooperative wanted to explore whether the system could help identify people who repeatedly cause harm in stores.

“We’re seeing some people repeatedly target our stores with serious, threatening behaviour, even after being trespassed. This trial will help us understand if facial recognition can help our teams identify repeat offenders so we can act quickly to prevent them causing more harm,” Donaldson said.

When someone is violent or aggressive in a Foodstuffs South Island store, a trained team reviews the incident. Only after a detailed assessment will the person be added to a watchlist. The facial recognition system then compares images of people entering a store against those on the list.

If a match is detected, an alert is sent to two trained team members who review it and decide whether any action is needed. This could include monitoring the person, contacting police or asking them to leave the store if it is safe to do so.

Foodstuffs said only images of people matched to the watchlist are stored. All other images are instantly deleted.

The company said it had worked closely with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and completed a Privacy Impact Assessment before starting the trial.

Donaldson said privacy was a key focus. “We recognise some people may have questions about the use of facial recognition. That’s why we’ve published clear information on our website about how the system works and the safeguards we’ve put in place and are happy to answer any questions about how it will be used in our trial,” he said.

Privacy safeguards include limiting the system’s purpose to improving safety, ensuring only confirmed offenders are added to the watchlist, maintaining a high accuracy threshold, and requiring two staff to manually review any match before action is taken. No images of minors or vulnerable people are entered into the system.

The three-month trial’s results will be reviewed before any decision is made about future use.

Foodstuffs North Island ran a similar trial earlier this year in 25 stores. The Privacy Commissioner’s public inquiry found it met privacy standards, and the technology continues to operate in those stores.