Supermarket giant Asda has launched a massive trial of live facial recognition technology in its stores to combat soaring shoplifting and assaults on staff.
In a move branded ‘disproportionate’ and ‘chilling’ by anti-surveillance groups, the retailer is introducing the scheme in five shops across the Manchester area.
The technology has been integrated into Asda’s existing CCTV network and works by scanning images and comparing the results to a known list of individuals who have previously committed criminal activity in one of its stores.
If a match is found by the automated system, in a matter of seconds head office security will conduct a check and report it to the store in question immediately.
The trial is just one of a battery of measures being taken by major stores to combat an ‘epidemic’ of retail crime – just as plummeting conviction rates have led to accusations that shoplifters are able to ‘act with impunity’.
They include Co-op, which has installed ‘fortified’ kiosks featuring toughened screen and keycode-controlled entry in hundreds of stores.
It is also trialling AI that uses CCTV to track suspicious behaviour.
Meanwhile Tesco controversially introduced weighing scales at its Gateshead to check whether customers using ‘Scan as you shop’ aren’t taking home extra goods.
According to trade body the British Retail Consortium, there are more than 2,000 incidents of violence and abuse against shopworkers every day – a threefold increase since 2020.
Yet in the year to December, 245,500 shoplifting offence cases were closed without a suspect being identified – averaging 672 a day.
Unsolved offences have jumped 38 per cent in five years.
Asda alone recorded around 1,400 assaults on employees last year, an average of four per day.
It says introducing live facial recognition – implemented from the start of the month in its Ashton, Chadderton, Eastlands, Harpurhey and Trafford Park stores – will make customers and staff safer.
After two months the results will be assessed before Asda decides whether to role it out across other branches.
Liz Evans, its chief commercial officer for non-food and retail, said: ‘The rise in shoplifting and threats and violence against shopworkers in recent years is unacceptable and as a responsible retailer we have to look at all options to reduce the number of offences committed in our stores and protect our colleagues.’
Already live facial recognition technology has been used by at least six police forces, while convenience chain Southern Co-op deploys it in some of its branches.
But campaign group Big Brother Watch has urged Asda to abandon the trial and demanded proper checks on the roll-out of such ‘invasive technology’.
Its senior advocacy officer Madeleine Stone said: ‘Asda is adding customers to secret watchlists with no due process, meaning people could be blacklisted despite being innocent.
‘Facial recognition is dangerously out of control in the UK.’
In a statement, Asda insisted the trial ‘fully complies with all data protection regulations’, with only ‘mathematical data’ of offenders being retained.
Additionally it said all stores would continue to alert the authorities when they believe an offence has been committed.
Facial recognition software works by matching real time images to a previous photograph of a person.
Each face has approximately 80 unique nodal points across the eyes, nose, cheeks and mouth which distinguish one person from another.
A digital video camera measures the distance between various points on the human face, such as the width of the nose, depth of the eye sockets, distance between the eyes and shape of the jawline.
This produces a unique numerical code that can then be linked with a matching code gleaned from a previous photograph.
A facial recognition system used by officials in China connects to millions of CCTV cameras and uses artificial intelligence to pick out targets.
Experts believe that facial recognition technology will soon overtake fingerprint technology as the most effective way to identify people.