I wish Big Brother Watch the best of luck though in my old age I'm too cynical to really believe they have any real hope of stopping this.

If you wear a hat with some text saying you're not on the list will the "AI" ignore you? Asking for a friend.

I was thinking about wearing one of [1]these !

[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/v-vendetta-masks/s?k=v%20for%20vendetta%20masks

If we all wear one they can only look for one person.

And he has been dead for several hundred years.

AC for the pic.

Hang on. A supermarket can quietly blacklist repeat offenders based on past behaviour, but government procurement is legally obliged to keep handing contracts to the same firms that have already failed, overrun, or delivered rubbish.

If you started banning such companies, you'd also need a process for dealing with any corporate obfuscation they might pull using subsidiaries, joint ventures, or the like. Otherwise, you'll just end up playing whack-a-mole with the single-use companies they spin up.

Society functioned for thousands of years without invasive surveillance cameras everywhere.

The real answer is not just to ban face recognition, it's to ban the cameras that enable it. Get them out of the stores, get them off the streets. If a single camera is not operated by a single human, make it illegal to operate at all. No automated recording systems, not even a wall of screens that one person can see, one camera, one person operating it, if you want 50 cameras in your shop you better have a room with desks for 50 people, and if no one is in the seat, the camera had better be off.

Oh, it wouldn't be any cheaper than just hiring security people to walk around the store? THAT'S THE IDEA.

While sympathetic to your sentiment, your idea is perhaps less than ideal.

For example, would this then make it illegal to have doorbell cameras or dash-cams? No one actively operates those.

Would this make it illegal to have home security cameras which might be left running while the owner is away?

Moreover, some many years ago, I did Jury service, and in one case, the prosecution claimed that they had a police witness plus audio and video...except the video hadn't worked and the audio was so bad it could have been anybody. So it was 1 person's word against the other, and an easy unanimous Not Guilty, since there was no way that guilt was proven beyond reasonable doubt. (And none of us on the Jury could work out while the case was even brought to court, but that's a different matter).

So your shop security guard catches the guy, but in court the thief said the guard has it in for him and is lying - a lot of thieves will get away with it; but if you have the footage from camera #3 actually showing the crime in progress, you get the thief. (And remember, ultimately shoplifting is paid for by all the honest customers that pay for their goods). 1 (human) operator monitoring a bank of monitors and a dozen cameras should be no more unacceptable than 1 (human) operator monitoring a single camera.

"Society functioned for thousands of years"

Yes, but what was in a time where there was little 'movement'. People would be born, live, and die within a 10 mile radius, so most people knew the people they saw day to day. And strangers would be treated with caution because people didn't know them.

Today you have scrotes that can can jump in their car, and 2 hours later be 100 miles away, where nobody knows them or recognises them. Allowing them to lead a life of crime that wouldn't have been possible for them for most of those 'thousands of years'.

Society has changed, so we must expected new things to appear in that changed society.

.

This in no way condones the private use of surveillance cameras. I am merely pointing out that the basis for your argument to ban cameras is not really that strong.

Banning snoopercams is a great idea. Can we also ban people who say "store" when they mean "shop"?

"hiring security people to walk around the store"

One of our ex-SOCOs was promoted to station sergeant in my local RUC station. One day I came across him when we were shopping in our local super-market. He was following the store detective round. He was worried about the number of suspects who seemed genuinely bemused when challenged and suspected her of sneaking products into innocent customers' chopping bags. He eventually caught her one day. I'm not sure what happened to all the wrongly convicted customers but I expect it worked out fairly expensive for the store..

>> Rajah had to submit a copy of his passport and head shot to Facewatch

Prove your innocence. It's disgusting. I hope there is way for Rajah to sue over this. He is not in the wrong.

"Rajah had to submit a copy of his passport"

And what if he didn't have one, or any other photo ID?

I guess up until the incident they were happy to take his money though, without any proof of ID.

This story amply illustrates why Digital ID is a non-srarter. If he had one and provided it they'd have then accused him of identity theft.

George Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning, not an instruction manual!

He has to leave the store when they ask him to do so but unless he wants to be able to go back he doesn't have to do anything else they ask him to.

Should that happen to me I'd not want to go back to that store ever and take my business elsewhere.

> And what if he didn't have one, or any other photo ID?

What?

Don't you know that IT IS YOUR DUTY to spend the time and money to buy ID documents to satisfy the desires of a faulty private company?

It is UP TO EVERY ONE OF US to shore up every half-arsed system that some rando, who isn't doing a damn thing to help you, as an individual, decides to make money from!

But but if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear....

Rajah had to submit a copy of his passport and head shot to Facewatch

Why did he have to do that if their system hadn't flagged him the first place?

It allows Sainsburys and Facewatch to get hold of his government issued ID and any extra juicy bits of data that can be cross-referenced from that.

Not that Facewatch would ever try to use that data - it is far easier just to sell it on to an aggregator.

After all, how else are Facewatch supposed to make back the money that this person has viciously caused them to lose?

""We have been in contact with Mr Rajah to sincerely apologise"

Who is the "we" in this? Ideally it would be the three store managers, humbly, in person. That way they'll learn to be more careful in future. Alternatively the C-suite, umbly, in person. That way they might review whether facial recognition.

Or is it just the first time they have been embarassed enough to admit this? After Rajah made (quite rightly) too much noise to be simply brushed under the carpet.

Or maybe just the first tme that a *Sainsburys* store manager did this?

Oh, and what about the floor walkers (anywhere that Facewatch is deployed) who have just walked people out without bothering to find the manager?

Because

> The technology has a reported 99.98 percent accuracy rate

0.02% multiplied by the all the people in all the stores that use Facewatch...

It's utterly unacceptable they are spying on customers in this way. Unfortunately the public are wittingly sleep walking into a surveillance culture. Because "safety" or some other babble. We will get what we deserve in due course.