Is Big Brother watching you shop?

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:09Today, coming to a store near you, the rise of live facial recognition.

0:26so it was the middle of the day around lunchtime to do my daily shop as i would normally do anything that fits in a basket as far as i'm concerned i don't need an awful lot of things i know what i need i'm in and out there was a couple of things that i was thinking of getting but as I entered the store and I noticed almost straight away that the security guard was following me. So I'd gone down the second aisle and I noticed a lady and was sort of drawn to the fact that she was looking at me. And three people surrounded me. It looked like one of them was a security guard. So at that point I felt like I could confront him and ask him if he was following me.

1:11and then briskly walked towards me and said excuse me do you mind just putting everything down and leaving the building now so i was really upset it was in front of loads of people it's a busy store on a saturday i was really embarrassed you didn't shock and your head spinning you're trying to make sense of the whole thing so i then asked why can you at least explain to me why and he said i have had a notification on my phone to follow you because you are a shoplifter And you know, I even questioned in the end, I was thinking, maybe I did steal something. Maybe I've actually put something in a bag and I didn't know I'd done it.

1:50And outside of the store was a poster that I've never seen before, which had a QR code. And all she said was, scan that and they will explain everything to you. And she just left me outside. And he said, you're on Face Watch. I'd never even heard of it.

2:09these stories sound like they happened in the same place but they didn't they're three different shoppers in three different parts of the uk all flagged by ai systems they didn't even know were watching them and it could be happening to you too every time you walk into a supermarket or down the street. Live facial recognition is being hailed as a powerful new frontier in the fight against crime, not just by police, but private companies too. And as it spreads, it will expand surveillance into more and more public spaces. And the problem is, it doesn't always get it right. It's very, very Orwellian.

2:54And that moment of me trying to prove I am who I am was very, very kafkai-esque as well you're just going into this like weird cycle of no escape it's very very it's disconcerting from the guardian i'm annie kelly today in focus is big brother watching you shop

3:23Jessica Murray, you're The Guardian's social affairs correspondent. Welcome back to Today in Focus. You have recently done this reporting where you spoke to different people who were very abruptly asked to leave a shop by security guards because they've been identified by something called live facial recognition or LFR. You know, none of us are any strangers to CCTV. We all know we're being filmed when we're in supermarkets. But can you tell us what is LFR and how is it different? So facial recognition technology can be quite simple. So all police forces, for instance, across the country have access to technology that can sort of map faces in, for example, CCTV footage or dash cam footage, doorbell footage to a sort of police database of mugshots, essentially, to try and find criminals or potential offenders.

4:19what's increasingly being used and which is causing quite a lot of controversy is the use of live facial recognition technology and that is where cameras are scanning faces in real time so people walking down the street doing their shopping at a supermarket or attending you know big events and it's scanning you know thousands millions of faces and and sort of in real time mapping them to police databases so that police kind of within seconds could spot someone in a crowd, you know, match them to the database and arrest someone sort of instantly. It's growing at such a rapid pace that there's a lot of concern about whether there's enough oversight and regulation of this.

4:56And tell me how that would play out in that supermarket setting. We've heard from, you know, those three people that experienced this firsthand. But can you tell us how it is that supermarkets are using this? Yeah, so a lot of supermarkets and shops are using this technology called Face Watch. And what that essentially means is if there is someone in the shop who they believe to be a shoplifter or exhibits some kind of antisocial behaviour, is violent or aggressive towards staff, they can use the CCTV footage, the cameras in store to kind of flag their face on the system. And that means if that individual then goes into the shop again or to another branch of the shop, when they walk in, their face will be scanned and it will flag on the system to a security guard.

5:37And that means they can instantly find that person in the shop, ask them to leave or follow them around the shop to keep an eye on them or whatever it is they deem to be acceptable to do. Can you tell us which supermarkets and other shops are using this technology? So Sainsbury's is one of the biggest shops to have rolled out last year, but also Morrison's Daily, Sports Direct, Cost Cutter, B &M, Home Bargain, Spa. I mean, there's quite a few and it tends to be, yeah, those kind of high street stores, supermarkets, corner shops, who maybe are kind of at the front line of shoplifting. So, yeah, so it's quite a few shops and it is growing all the time.

6:16And millions of people going through those shops every year. I mean, that's millions of faces that are being scanned every time you're going in to buy a pack of butter or whatever. I was going to say, yeah, if you're popping into sort of home bargains to buy, you know, just a couple of bits, I think the vast majority of people will not realise that their face is being scanned and yeah, they're potentially, you know, being added to some sort of watch list. It's quite crazy.

6:50it's like not necessarily something that you'd expect to see or indeed become unwittingly part of when you're you know doing your weekly shop in sainsbury's how long has this been going on for so it's from around 2017 that the first facial recognition software started to be rolled out in shops. But I'd say it's really sort of from 2020 onwards that we've started to see it becoming much more commonplace. And big retailers like Sainsbury's only just started using it last year in 2025. So it's still fairly early days, but I think it's growing quite rapidly. And they must have a duty to tell shoppers that this is happening when they go in to buy something.

7:28How is it that they are communicating or perhaps not particularly effectively communicating that this technology is being used? So yeah, most shops will have a poster in the window or somewhere in the store. But, you know, I imagine the vast majority of shoppers would not spot these. There's so many signs up in a typical supermarket, you're probably unlikely to see something like that. And the reason that the supermarkets have decided to use this, is it just because the technology is now widely available? I mean, I can imagine that this could alienate a lot of people who might be quite surprised and really not that happy about the fact that their faces are being scanned every time they go into one of these retail outlets.

8:09Why have they decided to go with this? Yeah, well, I think it's a combination of, you know, as the technology has become more accessible, it's become cheaper, it's become easier to get. But also, I mean, shops are having to deal with a huge surge in shoplifting and antisocial behaviour. security guards are having to deal with a lot more violence and aggression from customers. So you can see why it is an appealing option. It's a good way of being able to try and clamp down on that. You talked about shoplifting. Do we know if it's led to a drop in shoplifting for the companies that are using it?

8:38I think the thing that needs to be sort of emphasised is that FaceWatch does claim that its technology is 99.98 % accurate. But obviously there is still a margin of error here and it's up to these members of staff to essentially look at the match look at the person in front of them and make that judgment call of actually yes this is the person who has been flagged on the system as a you know potential shoplifter or whatever the issue might be they have to make that judgment call in person so i think it depends on who you ask so face watch obviously will say that it's been hugely successful they said that in 2025 they triggered over 500 000 alerts of known offenders in shops across the country they haven't released the data on how many alerts were kind of false alerts or inaccurate.

9:20Whether that data exists, I don't know. I mean, there's been no data to suggest that it has led to a decline in shoplifting yet, although it's, as I say, the technology is still very new. The amount of shops it's been employed in is, you know, still relatively small in the grand scheme of things. So I think we're still a little way of being able to see what its actual impact is on crime. Do you know what happens to those face scans? When your face is scanned, what happens? Does it just go into this giant database that's then accessible for any retailer that has access to that technology no so if your face is scanned and you're not a match on the system then it's instantly deleted and discarded so your face isn't kept on the system unless you are one of the people who's been flagged for instance if they believe you have been a shoplifter or you've committed some sort of offense then then yes your and what's called your biometric template which is your your kind of face scam will be kept on the system.

10:13But not if you're just, you know, a sort of innocent shopper. Unless, of course, you're misidentified, which happened to some of the people that you met. They experienced the rough end of this technology. And they were all, as we've heard, asked to leave the shop. It sounded like all of them were pretty surprised, but also pretty humiliated by that whole experience. Tell us what happened to them next. Yeah so they were all obviously as you said pretty stunned shocked I think all three the people I spoke to said they wish they'd kind of asked more questions and been more curious at the time the incident happened but I think when something like that happens to you you're often so kind of shell shocked that you don't know what to say.

10:54It's embarrassing as well isn't it to be escorted out of a shop by a security guard. So I think for all three individuals, they were literally just pointed to the poster that I mentioned, the FaceWatch poster, which will essentially say that this shop is being monitored by FaceWatch technology. But I think it led them to very little information and it took all three of them quite a lot of calls, various different avenues that they went down to try and get to the bottom of what had happened to them, why they were on this system and how they could kind of clear their name. So presumably they would have been worried that their faces would have ended up on a database that meant the next time they went into any of the shops that use this technology, something similar could have happened.

11:35Yes, I remember. So one woman I spoke to, Jenny, she said she went on the FaceWatch website. She saw how many shops were using this and she just thought, you know, I'll never be able to shop in person again. I'll have to do all my shopping online because she just thought every time I go into a shop, am I going to be asked to leave? Am I, you know, sort of blacklisted? So I walked back home really upset, but then I got more upset when I realised what a face watch was and realising that I wouldn't be able to shop at, I mean the list is massive, it's Sports Direct, Home Bargains, Budgins, Flannels, B &M, there's all sorts and they all share this same database of alleged, you've got to say alleged, criminals.

12:19And one of the other people you spoke to, Ian, he was, I mean, he kind of seemed to end up in a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare over after this experience. Can you tell me what happened to him? Yeah, so Ian, like all the people I spoke to, he found a phone number for Facewatch, which he tried to call but was just directed to a message which basically said Facewatch doesn't take calls, please contact us via the website, which I think he found really frustrating, the difficulty in not being able to talk to a human being about this. so he then reached out to face watch and they wouldn't sort of give him any information until he'd provided a copy of his passport to prove his identity and that happened to a couple of the people i spoke to who found it really sort of odd and frustrating that you know there's this private company that they've never heard of before which has this information on them and they're having to provide a copy of their passport just to sort of find out yeah yeah exactly and so face watch say that's kind of for essentially data protection reasons they can't give out information if they know who they're talking to, which you can sort of understand, but it does feel, you know, like a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare to be in.

13:22And that eventually led him to find out that he'd been sort of wrongly flagged on the system as being shoplifter. And that was because he was sort of inadvertently stood next to someone who was shoplifting on a previous visit to the shop. So now we have the truth. So she says, what do you want to do next? I said, well, I said, right now, I want a proper apology. I want it in writing. He did eventually get the apology from Home Bargains that he wanted. There we go. Can I read this to you, please? Yeah. A formal letter of apology has been sent to your home address as provided. In addition, we would like to offer you£100 as a gesture of goodwill without admission.

14:06Acceptance of the payment will constitute your agreement to these terms. Really? You wish to buy my silence? I don't think so. I mean, how did that make you feel? They did want to buy me silence for£100. It's just absolutely... And who should be looking out for people like Ian? So the Information Commissioner's Office are the body at the moment who are responsible for kind of overseeing this because they sort of monitor and regulate how people's data is used. And obviously your face is a form of data. but there are concerns about you know how much power and resource it has to deal with this um so you know one of the people i spoke to jenny she said she she did sort of send her complaints to the information commissioner's office with all the information she had and she didn't hear back um and you know someone else i spoke to said he didn't even bother because he just thought well what they're not going to be able to do anything um so i don't you know i want to don't want to go to the effort of doing that so there is a feeling that there is there is something missing here that there needs to be a sort of a proper regulator, a body who can deal with this.

15:12You have kind of the power and the resource to sort of sanction companies if they're not using this technology correctly.

15:27So Jess, shopping is one way LFR is being used, but where else is it happening? So the main ways that it is being used at the moment are through police forces. And about 12 police forces in the UK are now using live facial recognition technology. If you're out and about, you know, you might be at a big event or just walking down the street, you know, you'll see these big vans very well kind of signposted that this is a facial recognition van. But already the technology is moving on and actually, you know, those cameras are soon going to be more, you know, like CCTV cameras, just sort of stationary on a post or a lamppost somewhere.

16:02Jessica Murray:When the future arrives, there are always doubters. A hundred years ago, fingerprinting was decried as curtailing our civil liberties. But today we could not imagine policing without it. I have no doubt the same will prove true of facial recognition technology in the years to come. And we don't know if the supermarket shoplifting is declining because of this. But do we know if the police are actually successfully using this to catch criminals? Yeah, so police forces are really optimistic about this. They say that it's going to help them massively and that, you know, it's already leading to a number of arrests.

16:40So I think the Metropolitan Police in London are the police force, I'd say, have used this the most. In the phase five months of this year, they scanned over 1.7 million faces, which was an 87 % increase from the same period last year. And between September 24 and September 2025, almost a thousand people were arrested following the use of live facial recognition technology. So you've been arrested because you're shown one to the police national computer for involved in a GBH, pretty reasonably harm when you've assaulted someone? So, yeah, the police are, they say it's really effective. And, you know, for example, they, you know, I think it's over 100 sex offenders, they say, have been arrested as a result of using this technology.

17:21you know they have gave one instance where you know a registered sex offender was found alone with a young child as a result of of being detected by live facial recognition cameras

17:44so yeah so the police say that it's it's helping them massively but others it's worth noting that other experts say, yes, it is a useful tool, but it has its limitations and we shouldn't sort of get carried away with, you know, how transformative this could be. So how has it proved unreliable so far? You mentioned it was way less reliable in differentiating the faces of people of colour, for example. Yeah, so there's no denying it is rare, but there have been cases of false arrests where people have been either falsely apprehended or falsely arrested as a result of their face kind of being picked up on live facial recognition technology.

18:23And early evidence suggests that it is people of colour who are more likely to be falsely arrested for that because the technology isn't as effective as detecting those faces. So one case that hit headlines recently was Alvi Chowdhury, who was arrested at his home in Southampton for a burglary in Milton Keynes. And that was because his face had been picked up on live facial recognition technology that was being used by Thames Valley Police. But it was completely incorrect. It was another person of South Asian heritage who had committed that crime. And, you know, the software had obviously just made a mistake and made a false match.

18:59Never been to Milton Keynes before. It was 100 miles away from where he lived. You know, you would think that there was some kind of sort of human judgment that would have gone into that to determine that that was sort of an incorrect match. so one of the people i spoke to warren you know he expressed concern that oh you know although face watch say that their technology is 99.98 accurate there's no kind of breakdown of how that changes between different groups of people so you know research on facial recognition technology more generally has found that black and asian people are more likely to be misidentified it's one of the reasons why i wanted to speak out not because i'm a person of color because i look at at a much more broader umbrella, people that are vulnerable.

19:38I have the ability to go online and do research. I have the ability to take out my phone and click on a QR code and know how to work it. What happens with the older people? What happens with people that are blind? So if we as a society don't care about those people, we are no longer a civil society because that's what a civil society is. No one should have the right to have that much information about anyone. And again, if you think about the stores that are using it, think about who they're targeting. They're targeting people of lower socioeconomic status. And that's when it becomes a class issue.

20:09And that's a very, very British thing to do. These examples are still few and far between. And, you know, the technology is quite effective. But I think, you know, if it comes to the point where, you know, millions and millions of people are being scanned every single day, even if there's only a small margin of error, that does equate to quite a lot of people. So as this becomes more widespread and more and more police forces across the UK start using it, I think those cases of misidentification, wrongful arrest, I think we could see more of those. Coming up, is live facial recognition here to stay?

21:01so whenever there's a story about surveillance you know you normally come across this line well if you've got nothing to hide then there's nothing to worry about but having reported on this, do you feel that there is some concern around the fact it's being rolled out so quickly, maybe not with enough stops in place or enough consideration of how it really might be checked? Yeah, so I think a lot of the critics of live facial recognition technology very much want to see some sort of framework in place that would ensure that it's only used, I guess, proportionally. So if they can go and kind of knock on someone's door or do kind of other manual checks that they should always opt for that over just using facial recognition technology.

21:46You know, I think that there's a concern that police will just rely on this all the time, that it will become just almost the default for any background check or anything like that. And I think it's also what kind of crimes it's being used for. As I say, I think the general public probably wouldn't disagree that if it's being used to kind of catch terrorists or sex offenders, then, you know, then OK, that's something that we should be doing. But if it's kind of being used to, you know, find people who haven't paid a parking fine or something like that, it's, you know, where's the limits of how it's going to be used?

22:16And, you know, reading your reporting, it really made me think that we've got ourselves to a place already where we are monitored all the time. I mean, you know, you walk down the street, there are multiple cameras watching you. There are door cams now tracking your movements. Your own phone in your pocket is, you know, GPS tracking every possible step you take. so is this any worse and have we got ourselves to the position where it's a done deal and there's nothing really we can do to stop this technology being rolled out yeah I think the thing that makes this a bit different is is the power imbalance of it I guess it's it's people in positions of authority like the police like the you know the the security guards at your supermarket who can use this I mean they can use it against you if they if they want to they can use it to arrest to, they can use it to ask you to leave a shop, which I guess is what sets it apart from other forms of kind of video monitoring.

23:11I think ultimately it's only going to become more advanced. It's only going to become cheaper as more and more companies kind of get these algorithms and learn how to roll it out. And that's why I think the big push is now, we need regulation, we need oversight, we need the law to kind of catch up with the technology itself. And there's a lot of fear that, you know, law in this country takes a long time to come about. It could be, you know, at least sort of three, four years really before we actually see any sort of new regulatory body to keep track of this. And thinking back, what were your interviews with those people that found themselves on the sharp end of this technology?

23:45What did that leave you with? I was shocked at how significant an impact it had on their lives and how it had really upset them. The way they described their experiences of, you know, just going about their daily life and all of a sudden, you know, in front of a shop of people being asked to leave, not being given any explanation from that the sort of the fear you know that sick feeling in your stomach where you go home and you don't you don't understand what's happened and you don't understand of being falsely I you know identified as a criminal I really kind of felt that I thought like god that is actually really quite traumatizing I'm certainly hyper aware now with big camera everywhere I sort of zoom in on them you know like a hawk because I'm so aware that they're there If there's anyone looking at them, all they'll see is these two eyes staring back at them.

24:33I always think you can control your morality, you can control who you are, whether you steal or whether you don't. And actually, I couldn't control it. It was just something that was happening to me. I find it quite, quite scary now. You almost want to balaclava up, but you'd look even worse then. And you'd look like a criminal, wouldn't you? I mean, it makes me look more guilty. I've got no idea. I was really struck by the responses. It seems like they now feel like they're being constantly watched. And I guess the answer is they are. You are, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, I think there'll be a big realisation across the country in the coming weeks, months, years, where people realise that this is happening.

25:19Because as I say, you know, I've never thought when I've been walking around Sainsbury's or anything, I've never thought about the fact that my face is being scanned, that I'm being recorded. You know, I think maybe there will be just kind of more conversations around what this means for us, for, you know, civil rights, for privacy, for things like that. I think that is definitely a conversation that's going to be growing. Thanks so much for coming in today. Thank you. And that's it for today. My thanks to Ian, Jenny and Warren for their stories and to Jessica Murray. and you can read all of her reporting on LFR at theguardian.com.