Southern Co-op responds to ‘sickening’ claims about facial recognition cameras

The Co-op in Chichester has expanded its use of facial recognition in its store. SUS-210212-145014001

Southern Co-op have responded to ‘sickening’ claims by Big Brother Watch Group regarding its facial recognition cameras.

The cameras are currently in place at the store on Spitalfield Lane in Chichester.

A statement by Southern Co-op said: “The violence and abuse faced by our colleagues is sickening and unacceptable.

“We take our customers’ rights extremely seriously and have worked hard to balance these with the vital need to protect our store colleagues, and any customers present, from these appalling attacks.

“Our trials showed facial recognition made a significant impact on the safety of our colleagues.

“Where the levels of crime reduce to a point where it is no longer needed, the technology is removed. This has been the case in four of our stores.

“Our limited and targeted use of the technology is only where there is a high level of crime and there is clear signage throughout the stores.

“It has enabled our colleagues to identify when a known repeat offender enters one of our stores and has given them the time to decide on any action needed, for example, delivering customer service, or ‘aisle presence’, thereby preventing crime from taking place and removing a catalyst for violence.

“We have 200 plus stores and have this in 35 stores where there is a higher level of crime. We have no plans at present to roll this out any further.

“Signage is on display in the relevant stores including near the door, inside the door, behind our tills and on shelf edges.

“Only images of individuals evidenced to have committed an offence in the store, including those who have been banned/excluded, are used on our facial recognition platform.

“The facial recognition technology that we use has a 97 per cent accuracy rate - it has the most accurate facial recognition algorithms in the market as ranked independently by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology).

“There is also a human validation of the match.

“The system is GDPR compliant and does not store images of an individual unless they have been identified and evidenced as a repeat offender.”

Big Brother Watch had previously claimed that the Southern Co-op’s facial recognition cameras were ‘Orwellian’ and that they must be ‘urgently stopped’.

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