Associate Professor Gehan Gunasekara from the University of Auckland, joins Paul Brennan to unpack the Privacy Commissioner's recent report on foodstuffs' facial recognition technology (FRT) trial. While commending the report's thoroughness and the narrow focus of the trial — aimed solely at deterring serious violent offenders and prolific thieves — Gehan warns of “mission creep” and the risks of extending surveillance to broader categories of retail misconduct. He notes shortcomings in notification practices and the need for a uniquely New Zealand dataset to reduce racial misidentification. Although the tech showed promise in reducing incidents, Gehan urges caution against normalising or centralising such tools, highlighting the spectre of a “Big Brother-style” national watch list and a deepening retail divide between those who can afford compliance and those who can't.

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For more on this topic, check out Bonnie Flaws, Substack: One Register to Rule them All, 4 part series:

Part 1: What Stats NZ is planning behind closed doors

Part 2: The privacy implications of person-level tracking

Part 3: Government’s alarming data acquisition and sharing powers

Part 4: How the Statical Register will facilitate the admin-first 2028 census

And this is also discussed on RCR in The Fourth Estate and in Legal Hub