It would be hard to find a more stark illustration of the cost of living crisis than the fact that one in 10 young people say they have shoplifted to cope with rising costs. In one London borough, Calpol is the most shoplifted item. Elsewhere, parents say they are having to steal formula milk to feed their babies.
These are startling statistics. But rather than offering families the support they need, the government is instead increasing the use of invasive facial recognition technology to track shoplifters. This feels like an attempt to criminalise poverty.
Last month, Project Pegasus was launched. Ten of the country’s biggest retailers are planning to tackle the rise in shoplifting by handing over their CCTV images to the police, to be run through police databases using facial recognition technology.
The plans have been fronted by the policing minister, Chris Philp, who also has his sights on setting up a national shoplifting database which can be used by police and retailers nationwide. Such a database could include the passport photos of 45 million adults in the country.
This kind of facial recognition technology, which allows police forces to identify and track anyone they choose, regardless of suspicion, is already happening. Philp acknowledged a few weeks ago that all 45 police forces are currently using it.
Types of this technology include “live facial recognition”, such as placing a camera on top of a police van that scans everybody who walks past in real time, and then running the images through a database of our “faceprints” – including images taken from social media accounts. It could be “operator-initiated”, which is when a police officer can scan anybody’s face using their phone and again run it through a database of our sensitive biometric data. Or it could be “retrospective”, where the technology can be used against pre-existing images, such as CCTV footage of literally anybody who entered a shop.
Place this in the context of plummeting trust in UK policing and the picture gets ever more bleak. Not only is such technology ripe for misuse, history tells us surveillance tech will always be used to monitor and harass minority groups, and particularly people of colour. When the Metropolitan Police first trialled this tech, public deployments often took place in socially deprived areas and at events attended primarily by people of colour – such as the Notting Hill carnival. Since then we’ve seen it used at certain music concerts, but not others.
Yet despite the weight of evidence against its use, the policing minister said earlier this month that CCTV from shops and burglaries should be checked against passport and immigration databases using facial recognition. Using our passport photos – something we’ve submitted for the purposes of travelling – to track us when we go to the shops to buy a pint of milk is an extreme invasion of our privacy.
If these plans go ahead, it’s hard to overstate how much of an expansion this will be of government and police spy powers. They should worry anyone who wants to live in a society where everyone is treated with dignity and respect rather than suspicion, and can live freely without being watched by the state.
It might be tempting for the government to try to police its way out of the cost-of-living crisis, but in reality, facial recognition technology will do nothing to tackle the root causes of the problem. The challenges that shoplifting creates are best addressed by understanding the impact rising costs and poverty are having on people across the country, who are are struggling to pay their bills and feed their children. Basic foods like bread, butter and cheese have risen in price by more than a third in the past year, alongside skyrocketing energy, housing and fuel costs.
In recent months, we have seen commitments by John Lewis to continue to not use facial recognition in their stores. Nor are Liberty the only ones calling for a ban. Last week, dozens of cross-party MPs and peers joined calls led by Big Brother Watch for an immediate stop to the use of live facial recognition surveillance by police and private companies.
We have seen time and again that when we give up our rights we rarely get them back. Regardless of how the government and police attempt to justify facial recognition, history shows that once a surveillance structure is in place for any reason, its use will expand well beyond its original justification. The surveillance powers that were created under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) were touted as targeting and preventing terrorism. In practice, they were used by some local authorities to carry out surveillance on people for illegally dumping waste in recycling centres.
Far from keeping us safe, spy tech used on the general public undermines the rights and freedoms that protect us from state control and discrimination. The safest thing for everyone is to ban facial recognition technology.
Akiko Hart is the interim director of the human rights organisation Liberty
