Over 100 supermarkets and convenience stores in the Tokyo metropolitan area have been recording images of shoppers' faces as part of antishoplifting measures. Though the stores have posted signs stating cameras are in place, the stores have been sharing the biometric data of customers without their knowledge.
Such sharing should be considered an invasion of privacy and going against the intention of Japan's Personal Information Protection Law.
After 115 stores of 50 separate companies installed a shoplifting prevention system, they obtained the power not only to record every customer's face but also to share that record in a network.