Southern Co-operative deployed facial recognition surveillance systems in 35 stores to identify known offenders and reduce crime, prompting a formal privacy complaint from Big Brother Watch to the Information Commissioner's Office.
Southern Co-operative installed facial recognition surveillance technology in 35 stores across Portsmouth, Bournemouth, Bristol, Brighton and Hove, Chichester, Southampton, and London where crime levels are higher than average. The system, provided by UK company Facewatch and using cameras from Chinese firm Hikvision, creates biometric profiles of every visitor and matches them against a database of known offenders. When the system identifies a match, store staff are alerted to take action such as engaging in customer service to deter criminal activity or notifying authorities if the person has been banned. The technology can share biometric photos of 'subjects of interest' with other companies using the Facewatch system within an 8-mile radius in London or 46-mile radius in rural locations. Civil liberties group Big Brother Watch submitted a formal complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office, claiming the surveillance system uses 'highly invasive processing of personal data' and may be unlawful. Southern Co-operative defends the technology, citing a 34% reduction in violence against colleagues in 2021 compared to 2020, and states it has no plans to expand beyond the current high-risk locations.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that memorize and leak sensitive personal data or infer private information about individuals without their consent. Unexpected or unauthorized sharing of data and information can compromise user expectation of privacy, assist identity theft, or cause loss of confidential intellectual property.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed