Facewatch, a facial recognition system used by more than 100 businesses including Sainsbury’s, B&M and Spar to monitor thieves, said it was launching a UK-first feature to “alert police instantly when the most serious offenders trigger a live facial recognition match”.Facewatch’s chief executive, Nick Fisher, said the “unique technical development” would be launched in autumn and would warn police in an average of four seconds when the “worst offenders” were flagged on its network.
Amazing! Who could object? Oh. of course...
Civil liberties groups have voiced alarm at the development, saying it had “shot on far ahead of the regulation” and was “upending” the way retail crime was dealt with.
Well, it needs upending, doesn't it?
Charlie Whelton, the policy and campaigns officer at Liberty, said...“It’s not against the law to walk into a shop even if you’ve committed crimes in the past,” he said. “The idea of calling the police on somebody who hasn’t committed a crime, but there’s a concern they might, is really upending the way we do things. And of course, it’s not infallible. These systems do make mistakes, and it’s very hard to argue with that when it happens to you.”
Evidence suggests black and Asian people are more likely to be incorrectly identified than white people.
Aha! This is the reason for the concern, clearly.
Sarah Lasoye, the pre-crime programme manager at Open Rights Group, said the technology was “entrenching a climate of surveillance across public life”.
Newsflash, Sarah, we already have that, with the proliferation of video doorbells and smartphones. People are already surveilling themselves.
“Fundamentally, it’s an infringement of data and privacy rights,” she said. “People’s faces being scanned without consent and being added to lists is worrying enough, but the speed which Facewatch technology now makes it possible for someone to encounter the police force in the middle of their daily shop is a really dangerous escalation.”
Only if they are a known criminal, and surely you wouldn't want them to go free? Oh, but maybe you would, since you've drunk the socialist Kool-Aid?
She said the technology failed to address the social and economic root causes of shoplifting and “only served to further criminalise working-class communities”.
The working class aren't the demographic doing the shoplifting!
