A row has erupted over Asda's Trial of Facial Recognition Technology at Five of Its Greater Manchester Stores.
Asda announce it would be using the technology, supplied by faicetech, at its ashton, chadderton, eastlands, harpurhey and traffic park outlets to combat a surge in shop.
Privacy Campain Group Big Brother Watch Claimed Asda Had Been Sent Around 5,425 Emails complaining about the technology.
Asda denied the reports and say it had only received 89, the retail gazette reported.
Asda's Trial of the Technology Involves Using Its CCTV Network. Shoppers in the stores in the trial has their faces scanned which are then compared to images of peply have previously committed offenses at an asda site.
The grocer explained that if the automated system detects a match, a member of the retailer's head of office security team will conduct a check and farback to the store in real time.
But Madeleine Stone, Senior Advocacy Officer at Brother Watch's Said The Trail Was “Turns Shoppers Into Suspects, By Subjecting Customers Browsing the SuperMarket Aisles to a Series of Biometric Identity Checks ”.
She claaimed facial recognition had well-documents with account and bias, and had already led to distress and embarrassing cases of innocent shoppers.
Asda Does Not Receive Photos from The Police But Instead Collects Still Images from In-Store CCTV of Individual Suspect May Be Involved in “Theft, Violence and/Or Fraud in ASDA Stores” They may not be convicted of any crime.
Stone Said: “Asda's Decision to deploy orwellian facial recognition technology in its shops is deployed and chilling. Subjecting customers browsing the supermarket aisles to a series of biometric identity checks.
“Asda is adding customers to Secret Watchlists with no due process, meaning peply could be blacklisted despite being innocent. Already Led to Distress and Embarrassing Cases of Innocent Shoppers Being Publically Branded as Shoplifters.
She urged asda to Abandon this trial and the Government step in to prevent the unchecked spread of what stone was “Invasive Technology”.
Big Brother Watch has urged the supermarket to Immediate Abandon its trial of the technology.
The first Express has contacted asda for comment.