UK rights group Big Brother Watch has issued a legal complaint against grocery store Co-op’s use of live facial recognition cameras in 35 of its stores and alleged that the use of the technology is unlawful.
Co-op rolled out this surveillance tech without telling customers and the complaint estimates that the grocery store chain conducts biometric scans on thousands of shoppers each month via a surveillance system sold by the facial recognition technology company Facewatch.
“The supermarket’s staff can add individuals to the facial recognition ‘blacklist’, making them a ‘subject of interest,’ Big Brother Watch noted in a blog post about its legal complaint. “Shoppers are not informed if their facial biometric data, similar to the data held on modern passports, is stored or added to the supermarket’s blacklist where it is kept for up to two years”.
The rights group added that biometric photos of subjects of interest can be shared with other companies that pay to access Facewatch’s surveillance system and that in rural areas, these photos can be shared within a 46 mile radius ...
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