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The mixed privacy legacy of New Zealand's facial-recognition green light

By James Panichi and Saloni Sinha ( June 6, 2025, 05:58 GMT | Comment) -- This week’s conclusion by New Zealand’s privacy watchdog that a six-month facial-recognition trial by supermarket chain Foodstuffs North Island didn’t clash with the country’s privacy law may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory for retailers. In both Australia and New Zealand, the privacy-law hurdles that retailers must clear in order to deploy FRT technology to identify criminals walking into their stores remain significant. What’s more, with New Zealand’s regulatory landscape still evolving, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s report on the FRT trial may not age well. New Zealand reacted with both relief and consternation to this week’s news that a supermarket chain’s experiment with facial-recognition technology, or FRT, had cleared — albeit by a whisker — the hurdles placed before it by the country’s privacy law....

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