Chapter 1: What is the rise of live facial recognition in retail?
This is The Guardian.
Today, coming to a store near you, the rise of live facial recognition.
So it was the middle of the day, around lunchtime, to do my daily shop as I would normally do. Anything that fits in a basket, as far as I'm concerned. I don't need an awful lot of things. I know what I need. I'm in and out. There was a couple of things that I was thinking of getting. But as I entered the store and I noticed almost straight away that the security guard was following me.
So I'd gone down the second aisle and I noticed a lady and was sort of drawn to the fact that she was looking at me. And three people surrounded me. It looked like one of them was a security guard. So at that point, I felt like I could confront him and ask him if he was following me.
And then briskly walked towards me and said, excuse me, do you mind just putting everything down and leaving the building now? So I was really upset. It was in front of loads of people. It was a busy store on a Saturday. I was really embarrassed. You're in shock and your head's spinning. You're trying to make sense of the whole thing. So I then asked, why? Can you at least explain to me why?
And he said, I have had a notification on my phone to follow you because you are a shoplifter. And you know, I even questioned in the end, I was thinking, maybe I did steal something. Maybe I've actually put something in a bag and I didn't know I'd done it. And outside of the store was a poster that I've never seen before, which had a QR code.
And all she said was, scan that and they will explain everything to you. And she just left me outside. And he said, you're on face watch. I'd never even heard of it.
These stories sound like they happened in the same place, but they didn't. They're three different shoppers in three different parts of the UK, all flagged by AI systems they didn't even know were watching them. And it could be happening to you too. Every time you walk into a supermarket or down the street...
Live facial recognition is being hailed as a powerful new frontier in the fight against crime. Not just by police, but private companies too. And as it spreads, it will expand surveillance into more and more public spaces. And the problem is, it doesn't always get it right.
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Chapter 2: How do live facial recognition systems operate in supermarkets?
I have the ability to take out my phone and click on a QR code and know how to work it. What happens with the older people? What happens to people that are blind? So if we as a society don't care about those people, we are no longer a civil society because that's what a civil society is. No one should have the right to have that much information about anyone.
And again, if you think about the stores that are using it, think about who they're targeting. They're targeting people of lower socioeconomic status. And that's when it becomes a class issue. And that's a very, very British thing to do.
These examples are still few and far between. And, you know, the technology is quite effective. But I think, you know, if it comes to the point where, you know, millions and millions of people are being scanned every single day, even if there's only a small margin of error, that does equate to quite a lot of people.
So as this becomes more widespread and more and more police forces across the UK start using it, I think those cases of, you know, misidentification, wrongful arrest, I think we could see more of those.
Coming up, is live facial recognition here to stay? So whenever there's a story about surveillance, you know, you normally come across this line, well, if you've got nothing to hide, then there's nothing to worry about.
But having reported on this, do you feel that there is some concern around the fact it's being rolled out so quickly, maybe not with enough stops in place or enough consideration of how it really might be checked?
Yeah, so I think a lot of the critics of live facial recognition technology very much want to see some sort of framework in place that would ensure that it's only used, I guess, proportionally. So if they can go and knock on someone's door or do other manual checks, that they should always opt for that over just using facial recognition technology.
I think that there's a concern that police will just rely on this all the time, that it will become just almost the default for any background check or anything like that. And I think it's also what kind of crimes it's being used for.
As I say, I think the general public probably wouldn't disagree that if it's being used to kind of catch terrorists or sex offenders, then, you know, then, okay, that's something that we should be doing. But if it's kind of being used to, you know, fine people who haven't paid a parking fine or something like that, it's, you know, where's the limits of how it's going to be used?
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