RITE AID · AUTOMATION BIAS · SCALE
One enrolled person generated more than 900 alerts at more than 130 stores in five days.
Physically implausible pattern → automated alerts continued
The FTC described a five-day period in which Rite Aid's system generated more than 900 alerts at more than 130 stores across the country, all supposedly involving one enrolled person. The geographic pattern itself made the result implausible, yet the system continued producing alerts.
Why it matters: Scale can make an obviously bad system look authoritative. Producing more alerts does not produce more truth.
Source: Federal Trade Commission — Rite Aid facial-recognition enforcement analysis
This page preserves the anecdote and its caveats separately from the shorter Why Privacy Matters explainer. The goal is to keep the argument readable without hiding the receipts.