They'll jump through all these fucking hoops, use this invasive technology, and do everything BUT replace the self service tills with actual tills manned by actual people.

Majority of the thefts from these supermarkets stem from people cutting the barcode out of a 500g pack of Rice Krispies (as an example) and scanning that instead of the barcode for the 500g steak. Try doing that with a person behind a till, it won't happen.

But no. That costs them money.

Does that also bypass the RFID tag on the meat wrapping being read at the till & exit?

Firstly, you live in a dodgy area if the food in your local supermarkets are rfid tagged and secondly, you don't know how antitheft systems work if you think they read the tags as you exit the store.

"Does that also bypass the RFID tag on the meat wrapping being read at the till & exit?"

I've watched people walk out of a store with as many bottles of vodka (or other spirit) as they could carry under their coat. It set off the RFID alarm, but then what? They just hurry along and staff rightly shrug their shoulders. Many police forces have publicly stated they won't respond to shoplifting reports, so those police forces have effectively decriminalised theft. I don't see how LFR makes any difference? Maybe if shop staff are notified, then a few timid shoplifters can be actually and visibly watched by staff and thus deterred, but for the brazen it won't make a scrap of difference.

You seem a man of the world * . Umm, asking for a friend: do you know of cheap printer that copes well with sticky labels?

* Other sexes are available.

Try doing that with a person behind a till, it won't happen.

Sure minimum wage worker is going to protect big corporation margins with their life.

I agree with most of what you say but I had a bloody hard time trying and failing to convince two checkout operators and a supervisor that their 10p yellow stickered bogof pizzas should add 10p, not deducting the full £3.60 price of one pizza from my bill every time they scanned two.

So I gave up and loaded a shopping trolley with them and paid less than a tenner for over a hundred quids worth of other shopping.

"Try doing that with a person behind a till, it won't happen."

That just leaves the problem of the ones that 'miss' the scanner when checking out their mates' shopping.

I wonder how well it recognises faces when you still wear a mask when shopping...

Or, maybe, wear a face covering as part of your religion?

Covid is still a thing - dashboard from the UK health :

https://ukhsa-dashboard.data.gov.uk/respiratory-viruses/covid-19

People with compromised immune systems need to be careful.

Well judging by the fact that facial recognition often gives false matches when its people of colour, then it probably just as bad at matching different people with face mask on as the same person.

When you go to your "sainsbury's local" to go and get some gabric conditioner and find it is no longer on the shelves and out back as it keeps getting nicked so you have to ask

I get it with some of the meats - again now out back, but fabric conditioner - I was left open mouthed (but with soft clothes)

Not so much the lack of staff and too much self service, it is just they come in grab and go. However, as they all have security and stll come in and nick, makes me wonder what the "security" guards are guarding...

"Records of shoppers' faces will be immediately deleted if the software does not recognize their mug."

No they won't. It will be just like PC Plod who will claim beforehand that they'll delete DNA, fingerprints, facial recognition photos etc. but then we find out a while down the road that they've held on to them "to be on the safe side" supposedly but mainly because they view the general population merely as inevitable additions to the prison "gen pop".

I treat the assertion that this has anything to do with the safety of the few shop floor staff that are left and of the supermarket's customers with the same contempt that Sainsbury's has for the truth, i.e. that as with every vast corporation if it ain't about the £££ (or $$$ for our stateside chums) then it ain't nothing.

Record of 'face' will be deleted, record of face details in hashed form for use by comparison algorithms, that info is marketing gold when tied to the phone tracking tech already in place.

They can't be scanning people on the street before they come into the shop (err...can they? Even in the UK they Shirley can't get away with that!) so they only detect a bad 'un once they're already over the threshold. What happens? The lax security guard ejects said person? That might not end well, especially if the ID was faulty. I suppose they could follow them around the store to pressure them into not nicking anything...but that'd just mean the rest of the store is completely unguarded, allowing half a dozen 'unknown' people nick all the soap.

There is no presumption of privacy or anonymity in public in the UK so anyone can legally* video/photograph anyone on the street.

However, what you do with footage after that is covered by a lot of law.

* unless there's an unannounced terrorism orders in place for the area but that can get you arrested for wearing the wrong t-shirt.

Well, the Oldfield park one is my nearest Sainsburys local, wandering around the other day all the staff had those personal chest recorders on. Definitely not in favour of this nonsense, and of course it will be used against staff too, maybe not today, but soon.

But almost can't blame Sainsburys when the police response to shoplifting is 'meh' it's not a surprise they are taking things into thier own hands.

They just need to call the shoplifters 'scumbags' and the police will come running!

They just need to call the shoplifters 'scumbags' and the police will come running

"No, no, it's worse than that officer, they tweeted something mildly unpleasant! On the internet!"

"Ah, in that case we'll send a whole squad of officers, they'll be there in 3 minutes..."

""No, no, it's worse than that officer, they tweeted something mildly unpleasant! On the internet!"..."Ah, in that case we'll send a whole squad of officers, they'll be there in 3 minutes..."

Three minutes? In the case of Linehan, the police waited, poised and ready to strike for three months to be able to arrest him with five plod deployed at the airport. And the alleged "offence" was a tweet made in the US, so not even under our cretinous coppers' jurisdiction. Meanwhile, when some low life groped my wife's arse in a shop whilst his partner was paying at an adjacent till, it was all caught on CCTV, the police sounded sympathetic, but gave up tracing the git when his partner's bank declined an ID request (shop shared CCTV and transaction details) supposedly for GDPR reasons. I'm pretty sure that the police could have used the caveats of GDPR to demand the data, what matters is that despite having it reported, recorded on CCTV, and a digital evidence trail that could have led them back to the perp, they gave up very easily.

I'm not sure who the police work for these days; If there's a mad axeman in my garden I'll certainly phone my local force, but that's only because they've got a monopoly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reQaq3ArAak

"Mildly unpleasant"?

That says lots about you; https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/lucy-connolly-v-the-king/

A bit thick here but if it doesn't record the faces how does it recognise those faces subsequently ?

If it's preloaded with pictures of known culprits whence those images sourced ?

All a bit sad if the theft is of food to feed themselves and it's Sainsbury's not Harrod's so not a lot of caviar involved.

Here in AU the supermarkets use this technology to identify the product itself and verify the scanned code corresponds. Any inconsistency the self service attendant is required to validate the purchase to proceed.

The tech is surprisingly good at identifying fresh fruit and vege with easily confused fruit † like cucumber and zucchini (courgette) presented as selectable options.

† it's the seeds you know.

Exactly that.

How can it "recognize" if the previous record is erased ?

I smell a load of bull here.

If you ever needed proof Britain is sliding into fascism, here it is: government engineers a policing crisis, then corporations like Sainsbury’s step in with live facial recognition. This isn’t about safety - it’s the textbook merger of state power and corporate surveillance, where secret watchlists replace due process and supermarkets become the frontline of authoritarian control.

Don't forget ID cards are back on the agenda too, allegedly to help deal with the migrant "challenge".

This is all a home secretary's wet dream: Not only have we got mass surveillance by CCTV, we've got a national ANPR system to track vehicles, we have warrantless digital surveillance covering all forms of comms and data, including financial transactions, phone location data, anything a citizen posts online, and we've got plod and shops deploying LFR without a "by your leave". Could argue smart meters are part of this, I'm less convinced that they're a source of any high quality intel, it's more part of the broader government approach to citizen data, that if it can be collected by the authorities and stored it should be.

And many of the population seem to think Farage will be the saviour.. Sigh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reQaq3ArAak

in that I get followed around by store detectives quite a lot...and bloody useful they are too. If you can't find something, you just ask them, and they can't wait to get you out of the shop, so everything is fast and efficient. It's like having your own personal shopper squad!

Out of interest why does the gov person Rayner look like Catherine Tate about to say "whatever" or "am I bovvered?"

I recall from the news that someone had problems getting into one of the above stores due to facial recognition

So not completely flawless

As I mentioned earlier, I do get it. Bigger issue is the police not doing anything against shop lifitng and the supposed "not checking if less than £100" (or whatever figure it is)

Is Home Bargains the outfit with the cut out copper in the window? Tells you a lot about their opinion of their customers. Although the worst always used to be Toys R Us, whose entire stores were designed and signed to alert potential shoppers that they're all thieving criminals.