Facial Recognition in UK Shops Will Soon Instantly Alert Police About Offenders
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… Charlie Whelton, the policy and campaigns officer at [civil liberties nonprofit] Liberty, said it was concerned about this “untested, opaque development” and the way facial recognition technology had been allowed to “proliferate without anything to govern it”.
“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.” A number of people have been forced to leave shops after being falsely identified by Facewatch technology as a shoplifter, with some describing it as “Orwellian” and saying they felt as though they were “guilty until proven innocent”…
The use of the Facewatch technology looks set to quickly expand, with Sainsbury’s recently announcing plans to increase its use from 55 stores to more than 200 by the end of the year. Facewatch said it alerted retailers almost 300,000 times that a “known repeat offender” had entered a store during the first six months of 2026, and that its system allowed staff to intervene “before theft, abuse or violence could occur or escalate”… [E]xperts argue the use of facial recognition technology in shops to catch shoplifters is disproportionate. Nuala Polo, the UK public policy lead at the Ada Lovelace Institute, which studies the impact of AI on society, said: “There are other, much less intrusive means that you can use to catch shoplifters where you don’t need to be scanning millions of faces every day, virtually without consent....”
The campaign group Big Brother Watch has criticised police for “inserting themselves into this cowboy operation” and said people would be matched against “a secret blacklist compiled by unaccountable businesses and private security guards”.
Re:it’s always the “worst”
It already has been making false positive matches. There have been several stories about people randomly accosted as they entered stores like B&M, with the security staff claiming they were criminals and often breaking the law themselves in the process.
Because the database is shared by several different chains, it’s something that you can’t ignore if it falsely flags you. You need to get them to remove your face from it, and ideally claim some compensation for the misuse of your biometric data. The baseline is £250, but I’d be looking for at least £750 due to the hassle and embarrassment caused.
“disproportionate”
It’s cheaper than the loss to shoplifting. It’s not disproportionate.
Anybody who has ever tried to run a business knows that there is an absolute deluge of scammers and thieves targeting businesses of any size, and getting some authority to act even on direct evidence is next to impossible. Facial recognition systems on top of pervasive video surveillance are a form of vigilantism and exist because as a society we seem to have decided that “petty” crime is just fine - not even fined. If you don’t fend for yourself, you get fleeced. Being allowed to go into a shop, without being personally known and no other form of reputation, is a privilege born from trust created through a functioning society with laws that are enforced. Take away the enforcement, and in some cases even the laws, then the trust and privileges they afford us all are going away.
Police reaction?
Next step…
…facial recognition will alert shop owners when a compulsive buyer enters, so that he/she can be approached at once by shopping assistants.
Makes false positives expensive