Big Brother is watching you… shopping at Southern Co-op

A supermarket trial of facial-recognition cameras that spot known criminals as they enter a store has been branded ‘chilling’ by privacy campaigners.

The CCTV system, called Facewatch FR, alerts staff if it spots someone with a past record of theft or violence. Using stored images of individuals who have been banned or excluded for shoplifting or violence, it was carried out across 18 Co-op stores.

The Southern Co-operative said it introduced the cameras after attacks on workers rose by 80 per cent during the pandemic.

The group, which is independent of the larger Co-op chain but runs more than 200 stores in southern England under the same brand, said the scheme did not break data protection laws, and insisted that clear signage had been put up in the 18 stores.

However, privacy campaigners said the cameras had ‘deeply chilling’ implications of a Big Brother-style surveillance state.

The trial came to light in a blog posted on Facewatch’s website by Southern Co-op’s loss prevention officer Gareth Lewis. He wrote that the retailer has completed a ‘successful trial using Facewatch in a select number of stores where there is a higher level of crime’.

The Southern Co-operative said: ‘The purpose of our limited and targeted use of facial recognition is to identify when a known repeat offender enters one of our stores.

‘This gives our colleagues time to decide on any action they need to take – for example, asking them to politely leave the premises or notifying police if this is a breach of a banning order.

‘The No 1 reason for violence in our stores is when a colleague intervenes after a theft has already taken place. Using facial recognition in this limited way has improved the safety of our store colleagues.

‘Already this year, we have seen an 80 per cent increase in assaults and violence against our colleagues.’

Facewatch has boasted of plans to introduce its system in more than 500 stores and petrol stations following trials with other businesses including Budgens.

It claims the system is 97.8 per cent accurate at recognising faces, even when face masks are worn – and stressed that it used only images of previous offenders, and none were shared with the police or other organisations.

Spokesman Stuart Greenfield rubbished the complaints of privacy campaigners, saying: ‘We are sick of these people being so negative about this. These critics are actually helping the criminals by trying to create scare stories. This is about crime prevention.’

But critics have questioned the legality of the technology in stores. Silkie Carlo, director of civil rights group Big Brother Watch, said of the Co-op trial: ‘To see a supposedly ethical company secretly using rights-abusive tech like facial recognition on its customers in the UK is deeply chilling.

‘This surveillance is well known to suffer from severe inaccuracy and biases, leading to innocent people being wrongly flagged and put on criminal databases. Live facial recognition is more commonly seen in dictatorships than democracies.

‘This is a serious error of judgment by Southern Co-op and we urge them to drop these Big Brother-style cameras immediately.’

In the trial, the database of images was collated by the Co-op in partnership with Facewatch from its own CCTV pictures of individuals who had previously been caught and reported to the police for shoplifting or violence.

Facewatch said the law allows it to keep these as a reference for up to two years, and stressed that it keeps a separate database for each retailer it works with and does not share images between them.

Facial recognition technology is controversial, with questions over how well it recognises darker shades of skin, alongside ethical concerns about privacy.

In August, the use of the cameras by British police forces was ruled unlawful in a case brought by a civil rights campaigner.