Customer Experience

Canada mall operator cited for consumer privacy violations, pulls facial recognition cameras

Image courtesy of iStock.

October 30, 2020

Cadillac Fairview in Toronto — one of North America's largest commercial real estate companies — has removed the embedded cameras inside its digital information kiosks after a government investigation found the company used facial recognition without customer knowledge, according to a press release from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. The company operated the kiosks at 12 shopping malls across Canada.

The goal, the company said, was to analyze the age and gender of shoppers and not to identify individuals. Cadillac Fairview also asserted that shoppers were made aware of the activity via decals it had placed on shopping mall entry doors that referred to their privacy policy — a measure the commissioners determined was insufficient.

Cadillac Fairview also asserted it was not collecting personal information, since the images taken by camera were briefly analyzed and deleted. However, the commissioners found that Cadillac Fairview did collect personal information, and contravened privacy laws by failing to obtain meaningful consent as they collected the 5 million images with inconspicuous cameras. Cadillac Fairview also used video analytics to collect and analyze sensitive biometric information of customers.

The federal, Alberta and British Columbia Privacy Commissioner investigation also found that:

• Facial recognition software was used to generate additional personal information about individual shoppers, including estimated age and gender.
• While the images were deleted, investigators found the sensitive biometric information generated from the images was being stored in a centralized database by a third party.
• Cadillac Fairview stated it was unaware the database of biometric information existed, which compounded the risk of potential use by unauthorized parties or, in the case of a data breach, by malicious actors.

"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," Privacy Commissioner of Canada Daniel Therrien 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."

"This investigation exposes how opaque certain personal information business practices have become," Jill Clayton, information and privacy commissioner of Alberta, said in the release. "Not only must organizations be clear and up front when customers' personal information is being collected, they must also have proper controls in place to know what their service providers are doing behind the scenes with that information."

"Questions about when an organization is collecting personal information can be complex, but the conclusion we came to about cameras in mall directories was straight-forward," Michael McEvoy, information and privacy commissioner for British Columbia, said in the release. "Pictures of individuals were taken and analyzed in a manner that required notice and consent."

The regulators launched the investigation following media reports that raised questions about the company's practices.

In response to the investigation, the company removed the cameras from its digital directory kiosks. It has no plans to reinstall the technology. It has also deleted all information associated with the video analytics technology that is not required for potential litigation purposes, and confirmed it will not retain or use such data for any other purpose.

This includes the 5 million biometric representations of individual shoppers' faces, which it had retained for no specified reason.

The three privacy commissioners have recommended that if Cadillac Fairview were to use such technology in the future, it should take steps to obtain express, meaningful consent before capturing and analyzing the biometric facial images of shoppers.

The commissioners remain concerned that Cadillac Fairview refused their request that it commit to ensuring express, meaningful consent is obtained from shoppers should it choose to redeploy the technology in the future.