Sainsbury’s ‘Orwellian’ Face-Scanning Cameras Slammed by Privacy Group
Sainsbury’s is facing renewed criticism over its use of live facial recognition technology, with privacy campaigners warning that the supermarket is expanding an “Orwellian” surveillance system.
The retail giant said earlier in the year that facial recognition technology is now in use in 40 Sainsbury’s stores, with plans to roll it out to up to 200 stores by the end of the year.
Civil liberties organisation Big Brother Watch raised fresh concerns on October 20 saying that the “use of live facial recognition is Orwellian and a threat to everyone’s privacy.”
“This authoritarian surveillance has no place on the streets of Britain.”
The system is designed to identify individuals whose facial images match those held on a watchlist, with the aim of helping staff tackle repeat offending and abusive behaviour.
Unlike ordinary CCTV, which records footage for possible later examination, live facial recognition software automatically analyses faces and compares them against stored images.
Big Brother Watch has previously highlighted the case of an innocent man who was incorrectly flagged by a facial recognition system while shopping at Sainsbury’s.
The campaign group says that the technology risks turning a simple trip buying a couple of tinnies into an exercise in mass surveillance, with customers having their faces scanned despite having done nothing wrong.
Being wrongly identified means a potential ban from ANY store.
Retailers, meanwhile, have increasingly turned to security technology amid concerns about shoplifting, violence and intimidation directed at staff.
Sainsbury say that Facewatch technology, a facial recognition system used by more than 100 businesses to monitor thieves, “is used to help trained colleagues identify known offenders involved in violence, aggression or theft, enabling early intervention before situations escalate.”
“Results from our early rollout have been clear with more than 90 percent of banned offenders not returning to our stores.”
It claims that the system is “not used to monitor everyday shoppers or colleagues.”
“Where someone is not recognised, any image captured is deleted immediately. Privacy, transparency and trust are central to how the technology is used, with clear signage in place in all stores where it operates,” it added.
TechRadar said that Facewatch does “not sell customer data, and if there is no match, that biometric math is deleted in milliseconds — though photographic crops of detected faces are held for up to seven days for retroactive incident review.”
Do you believe them?