Tech companies scan your face while you shop

Photo: SolStock/E+

If you miss the camera above the entrance, a sign will tell you this. “FACE RECOGNITION & THIS SITE HAS VIDEO SURVEILLANCE,” reads the sign in black letters as the automatic door slides open.

As you enter, the camera scans the contours of your face, instantly matching it with a database of known shoplifters.

Since you are a law-abiding citizen, the computer finds nothing. The video recording and all associated biometric data are instantly deleted. This happens hundreds of times a day as customers enter and exit the store.

If your face matches, store managers will receive a silent alert and a photo of you, the suspected thief. . Within seconds, a cheerful employee will appear behind you, pleasantly telling you, “I'll be there for you if you need help.”

“Our technology allows [stores] to do what they've always done, but It's completely ineffective to try to rely on human memory,” says Simon Gordon, chief executive of Facewatch, the company that runs the technology.< /p>

Business is booming. Gordon says Facewatch has doubled in size over the past four years and licensed its technology to hundreds of stores. The British company works with companies such as Budgens, Costcutter, House of Fraser and Spar.

“We've seen crime reductions of 35%, 40% and sometimes much more than that, as well as significant reduction in violence against staff,” says Gordon.

0208 Number of shoplifters in England and Wales

At one store, he said, one in four customers stole something before the technology was introduced. That number has plummeted.

But this technology is not a panacea. It can deter crime, but it cannot guarantee prosecution. And those who are stopped by technology can simply move to another place.

Now major supermarkets are joining forces with police in a radical data-sharing effort known as Project Pegasus, which supporters hope will cut down on retail crime. But opponents say it is an attack on civil liberties.

In recent weeks, a group of Britain's biggest retailers have been discussing details of a new operation that would help them work more closely with police to target criminal gangs. visit their stores.

In addition to Home Office cash, retailers including Tesco, Co-op, John Lewis, Next and Sainsbury's are contributing up to £600,000 to fund the project. It will involve a team of data scientists who will analyze CCTV footage, incident reports and body camera footage to connect the dots.

An executive from one of the retailers involved in the project, says sharing information is the only way to crack down on organized crime gangs stealing from stores. “Unless we force retailers to band together, we won't be able to make a significant difference.”

0208 Cooperative Crime Wave

Richard Walker, Iceland's executive chairman, says: “Ultimately the problem is that the police are so stretched thin and dealing with something else elsewhere. Shoplifters know this. They know that the police come very rarely.”

Katie Bourne, the Sussex Police and Crime Commissioner who leads Project Pegasus, said: “The problem was that the police force didn't really see the bigger picture. In fact, at the moment, no one has a unified vision of all the threats. And this changes the rules of the game.”

However, not everyone is convinced of this. This collaboration represents a new security collaboration between private companies and the government. Fraser Sampson, biometrics and CCTV commissioner and former police officer, says this could cross a line.

“To me, there is a different public appetite and level of support for using technology to detect crime or reduce crime compared to when it is used by the government for law enforcement,” he says.

“People are concerned about the area with technology surveillance, used by the government, used with other databases, which becomes an official record of activity. So if you act as an appendage of the state rather than protecting your own private business space, there is a different level of public support.»

Contrary to recent reports, insiders insist that facial recognition has not yet been part of Project Pegasus discussions, despite the fact that the national police database — a central record of information containing about 16 million faces — is compatible with facial recognition schemes.

However, Bourne does not rule out that the facial recognition system will become part of Pegasus in the future. Real-time facial recognition has already been used by police at large public events such as coronations, despite the technology's legal status being unclear.

Reports earlier this year suggested that Police Minister Chris Philp was seeking to increase the use of the technology. facial recognition in the forces of England and Wales and allows it to be used not only in CCTV devices, but also in drones, wearable devices and ANPR cameras for number plates.

Madeleine Stone from campaign group Big Brother Watch is concerned about the slow adoption of the technology facial recognition.

“It is unacceptable that the police and private companies write their own rules for using such a powerful device. surveillance technology,” she says. “We urgently need a democratic, legal approach to the role of facial biometrics in Britain, but until now there has not even been a parliamentary debate on this.”

Facewatch itself has been the subject of an investigation by the Information Commissioner's Office. The privacy regulator found that the company acted within the law, but noted that there were «problem areas» that the company then addressed, such as reducing the amount of data it collected about subjects caught on CCTV.

Supermarkets complain about this. Data protection laws are an obstacle. Walker says GDPR laws prevent various store managers in Iceland from sharing photos of thieves in WhatsApp groups.

In addition to privacy concerns, the types of cameras that collect information are also a potential concern. The UK's largest supplier of CCTV cameras is Hikvision, a Chinese company blacklisted by the US for providing security around Uyghur Muslim camps in Xinjiang.

The government banned their use at sensitive sites. Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Morrisons and the Co-op banned the installation of new cameras last year in response to pressure groups, although existing ones are still in operation.

Food inflation

So far, increased surveillance has not stopped shoplifting. Retail thefts rose 22% in the year to September, according to the Office for National Statistics. The British Retail Consortium says nearly £1 billion was lost in 8 million thefts last year. Meanwhile, levels of violence and abuse against staff have nearly doubled their pre-pandemic levels.

The cost of living crisis is to blame, as is an overstretched police force. Stores complain that law enforcement is failing to investigate shoplifting cases.

Artificial intelligence surveillance is being seen as a cost-effective answer to the problem of shoplifting. But there is little debate about whether the general public is willing to accept scanning as payment for shopping.

Facewatch's Gordon says the case against the technology is weak. “Regular customers will not be tracked and traced. The whole idea is complete nonsense.”

Instead, he says artificial intelligence tools will simply give stores a fighting chance against gangs of thieves. “Everything we do is improve the ability of store owners to prevent crime in their stores.”