logo
Thousands of shoppers complain after Asda makes huge change to stores in bid to track customers & target thieves

Thousands of shoppers complain after Asda makes huge change to stores in bid to track customers & target thieves

Scottish Sun23-04-2025

It has raised concerns about privacy and data
SHOP WATCH Thousands of shoppers complain after Asda makes huge change to stores in bid to track customers & target thieves
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
ASDA has received thousands of complaints over a tech trial which people have dubbed as "Orwellian".
The stores' new live facial recognition technology has had more than 5,000 complaints, the Grocer reports.
Sign up for Scottish Sun
newsletter
Sign up
2
The technology has been provided by Faice Tech and will be integrated into existing CCTV networks
Credit: Getty
2
Asda will assess the results of the trial before deciding whether to extend or roll it out at more locations
Credit: Reuters
It comes after the use of the technology was implemented at five branches in Greater Manchester at the end of last month.
With aims of tackling retail crime, Asda introduced the two-month tech trial to branches in Ashton, Chadderston, Eastland, Hapurphey and Trafford Park from March 31.
Big Brother Watch, a British privacy campaigning organisation, has labelled the supermarket's use of this technology "deeply disproportionate and chilling".
Senior Advocacy Officer Madeleine Stone said: "Facial recognition surveillance turns shoppers into suspects, by subjecting customers browsing the supermarket aisles to a series of biometric identity checks".
She expressed her concern about the out of control use of the technology in the UK: "[It] has well-documented issues with accuracy and bias, and has already led to distressing and embarrassing cases of innocent shoppers being publicly branded as shoplifters."
Asda stated the trial was a way of improving colleague and customer safety in stores, as well as combating the epidemic or retail crime.
The retailer cited the circa 1,400 assaults on Asda colleagues that were recorded last year, which averaged at four per day.
With the technology, the company can collect images from CCTV of individuals staff suspect to be committing theft, violence or fraud in Asda stores and compare them to a known list of individuals who have previously been involved criminal activity at an Asda site.
If a match is found, the automated system alerts a member of the Asda head office security team who can conduct a check and feedback to the store in seconds.
However, organisations like Big Brother Watch are calling for Asda to abandon the trial and for the government to step in and prevent the "unchecked spread of this invasive technology".
Liz Evans, Chief Commercial Officer Non-food and Retail at Asda, said: 'The rise in shoplifting and threats and violence against shopworkers in recent years is unacceptable and as a responsible retailer we have to look at all options to reduce the number of offences committed in our stores and protect our colleagues.
'We consistently look for new ways to improve the security in our stores and this trial will help us understand if facial recognition technology can reduce the number of incidents and provide greater protection to everybody in our stores.'
Moment Asda shopper SMASHES vegan's megaphone during Easter lamb protest
As the technology has raised concerns around privacy and data, Asda has claimed it fully complies with all data protection regulations.
Other stores, like Southern Co-op, also use the facial recognition technology, as UK's cases of shoplifting have been labelled "out of control" by the British Retail Consortium.
A report released in January revealed violence and abuse surged by over 50 per cent in the past year, and a whopping 340 per cent since 2020.
Levels are now at over 2,000 incidents each day with the total £2.2 billion in losses as a direct result of customer theft.

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Reeves has folded like the Tin Foil Chancellor she is
Reeves has folded like the Tin Foil Chancellor she is

Telegraph

time10 minutes ago

  • Telegraph

Reeves has folded like the Tin Foil Chancellor she is

Rachel Reeves confirmed on Wednesday that she is a ' spend today, tax tomorrow ' Chancellor. Her spending spree on the country's credit card has set us on a collision course with the autumn when more tax rises will hit working families' pockets hard. After a year of chaos, how can anyone take this Government seriously? Rather than using the spending review as an opportunity to deliver secure public finances, the Chancellor is instead lurching from one disaster to the next. The cruel cuts to winter fuel payments, the £30 billion Chagos Islands surrender and the billions in no-strings-attached union handouts are all chickens that have come home to roost. When the pressure is on, the self-styled 'Iron Chancellor' folds like the 'Tin Foil Chancellor' she really is. She promised to get borrowing down, but the deficit is up by 70 per cent on her watch. She pledged no new taxes rises, yet more are on their way. She pledged not to change pensioner benefits, then U-turned. Then U-turned again. The only consistent thing about her is her inconsistency. Her own MPs, Cabinet ministers and Labour's trade union paymasters smell weakness. They know she's vulnerable and they will demand more money – and get it if they shout loud enough. The Chancellor has boxed herself into a corner. We face an extra £200 billion of borrowing this Parliament compared with the last Conservative Budget, with £80 billion more in interest payments alone. We are almost a year in but no economic plan is forthcoming. Our country is exposed. We have no room left to respond to shocks in global markets. Interest rates and mortgages are staying higher for longer because of her choices, as the OBR has said. She trumpets the hundreds of billions in extra spending she has announced while on the other hand claiming to have fixed the public finances. It simply doesn't make sense. She claims there is 'still work to do to ensure the sums add up'. That's not stability, it's uncertainty – the very last thing markets want to hear. It is not just markets. Her abject failure means British families have seen inflation almost double, unemployment rise, growth stalling, debt interest soar and pensioners sacrificed. The country is worse off because of her choices. What of the winter fuel U-turn? Last summer, pensioners were left out in the cold to avoid 'a run on the pound', as Labour's Lucy Powell put it. Now they claim they can afford to reverse it because they have fixed the economy and the finances – but economists are saying both are in a worse state since Labour came to office. Nothing's changed except the Government's credibility, which is vanishing. Rock bottom confidence There was nothing in her review restore rock bottom business confidence. Payrolls fell by over 100,000 last month alone. Unemployment is up 10 per cent since Labour took office. Only businesses create growth and jobs. But our Chancellor has not yet learnt that basic lesson of economics, her fingers planted firmly in her ears whilst the alarm bells are ringing. Similarly, the first and most important duty of any Prime Minister is keeping the country safe. But even as the world is becoming more dangerous and a new axis of evils draws their battle lines, there was no further progress towards spending 3 per cent of GDP on defence, which Labour claim to be committed to. They stood firm on the Chagos surrender, which is paying for tax cuts for Mauritians while we suffer, costing our country £30 billion to lease back our own land. There is no urgency on the issues of the day. The Home Office budget too has been significantly hit by asylum costs, while illegal crossings soar. Rather than point the finger at everyone else, the Chancellor should take responsibility and fix the problems she has created. Instead, the socialist's lazy embrace of high spending, more borrowing and higher taxes beckons – leaving our public finances dangerously vulnerable. If we were in charge, we would take a different approach. We wouldn't kill growth with tax rises and red tape. We'd restore confidence, focus on efficiency and productivity, and reform welfare to get people off benefits and into work. At the end of the day, it's working people and businesses who will pay – with higher taxes, higher costs, and fewer opportunities. This Spending Review is unaffordable, and so is this Chancellor.

KKR threat to NHS landlord: Don't give the barbarians a foothold in a sacred public service, says ALEX BRUMMER
KKR threat to NHS landlord: Don't give the barbarians a foothold in a sacred public service, says ALEX BRUMMER

Daily Mail​

time15 minutes ago

  • Daily Mail​

KKR threat to NHS landlord: Don't give the barbarians a foothold in a sacred public service, says ALEX BRUMMER

Freed from the proposed £4billion rescue of Thames Water, private equity barons KKR have come fizzing back with an upgraded offer for NHS and private healthcare landlords Assura. KKR's latest and final bid of £1.7billion is only marginally better than that from listed rival Primary Health Properties (PHP) but is being recommended by Assura's board. The battle isn't necessarily over, with PHP still looking at options and claiming Chancellor Rachel Reeves's bonanza spending on the NHS as an ally. As has become customary when listed companies seek to vanish from the London stock market, there is extensive waffle from Assura about careful evaluation and fiduciary duty. The latter is investment banker-speak for running up the white flag. In cash terms, the KKR offer, at 52.1p a share, is barely better than the 51.7p bid from PHP. A 39 per cent premium may seem wonderful but given the depressed state of share valuations in London and a recent tech offer with a 96 per cent premium, the KKR deal is hardly effervescent. There is no obligation for Assura to accept either deal. A braver board would have told the private equity plunderers to get lost. Instead, it chose to disparage the alternative 'merger' with PHP, claiming financial and execution risk. The board also argues that the PHP offer would diminish Assura's efforts to support investment in the NHS estate. Who is Assura kidding? KKR fears too much exposure to regulated British assets and the political risk which comes with it as we learned when it pulled out of the near-complete Thames Water deal. Assura also needs to remind itself of how private equity works. Load up target companies with debt, squeeze costs, do some clever financial engineering with the leverage, raise prices or rents and head for the hills. A Government which better understood how highly indebted deals work might be cautious. A reading of the Competition & Markets Authority's work on veterinary services, revealing how the cost to pet owners and farmers has escalated, illustrates the dangers. More market-based private medicine in the UK eases pressure on the NHS. But allowing the barbarians a foothold in a sacred service is unacceptable even if it's wrapped up with tinsel and a bow. Sign of the Zodiac This week's pandemic of bids for Britain's tech crown jewels and skin care specialists rightly has been accompanied by much handwringing. How is it that companies born and bred in UK science and tech struggle to develop into national champions? After all, the City is second only to New York as a financial centre and is home to one of the world's biggest collection of banks and a strong venture capital industry. There ought to be no bars to start-ups or smaller listed firms accessing capital. Freeing up pension funds, allowing them to be more adventurous, ought to help. But swift market access to funding and liquidity is the key. That is why the launch of Pisces, the London Stock Exchange's platform for 'intermittent' capital, a place to come to raise funding and then vanish behind a privacy wall, is an important innovation. Stock exchange group boss David Schwimmer has been promoting the concept for years but freeing it from the weeds of regulatory bureaucracy is not easy. The insistence on broad-based disclosure rules threatened to sideline it. So it is good to learn that the Financial Conduct Authority, in keeping with the growth agenda, has dropped onerous transparency requirements on the environment, shareholder transactions and director pay. These threatened to strangle Pisces at birth. Let the fundraising begin before the rush to the door of UK tech and AI becomes a stampede. Peer pressure It has become something of a thing for Chancellors to name-check colleagues when delivering grand financial statements to the Commons. Rachel Reeves set a record with her pledges to spend, spend, spend in Labour constituencies in the North, Midlands, Scotland and Wales. Lonely Weymouth was the only southern town to receive much of a mention. Unlike Southport, it already has a serviceable pier.

Borrowing costs rise as Reeves splashes cash: Nervous investors fret over spending spree
Borrowing costs rise as Reeves splashes cash: Nervous investors fret over spending spree

Daily Mail​

time16 minutes ago

  • Daily Mail​

Borrowing costs rise as Reeves splashes cash: Nervous investors fret over spending spree

British borrowing costs edged higher yesterday as 'nervous' investors fretted over how Rachel Reeves will pay for her lavish spending spree. The yield on ten-year gilts rose as high as 4.62 per cent on speculation that the Chancellor will be forced to increase borrowing or raise taxes to make her Budget numbers add up. It eased later in the session to 4.55 per cent – thanks to weaker-than-expected US inflation boosting hopes of interest rate cuts across the Atlantic – but remained the highest in the Group of Seven major industrialised nations. This means that Britain is paying more to borrow on international bond markets than every other leading developed economy on Earth. Oliver Faizallah, an analyst at wealth manager Charles Stanley, said: 'Markets remain nervous about the potential for either higher taxes or an increase in borrowing in the future. 'An increase in taxes may be seen as more market-friendly, but would be politically damaging, while an increase in borrowing would put further pressure on already elevated gilt yields. Fiscal concerns in the UK will no doubt keep gilt yields higher for longer.' He noted that the easing in gilt yields after early rises 'had nothing to do with the spending review but came on the back of lower-than-expected inflation in the United States'. US inflation nudged up only slightly from 2.3 per cent in April to 2.4 per cent in May, lifting pressure on bond yields around the world. The mood was further boosted after US President Donald Trump declared that a US-China trade deal is 'done' – an announcement that suggested tensions between the world's two largest economies were thawing. It was not enough, however, for the FTSE 100 to close at new highs, with the index ending the day up just 0.1 per cent at 8864.35, having spent much of the session above March's record close of 8871. Investors warned that doubts remain over Labour's handling of the economy – and the outlook for tax, spending and the public finances. 'Another fiscal event goes by with little resolved in terms of allaying investor fears that fiscal policy is on a sustainable footing,' said Neil Mehta, portfolio manager at capital market company RBC BlueBay Asset Management. 'With Labour's favourability rating in free fall with the public, the Government is bending to political pressure and proposing a raft of spending measures, seemingly taking their eye off the ball regarding fiscal responsibility. 'Until fiscal policy is brought back on a sustainable path, investors will continue to demand a higher premium for investing in UK assets, such as gilts, than peers.' Gordon Shannon, a fund manager at Twenty Four Asset Management, said he was 'disappointed that there wasn't more clarity' on how the Chancellor intended to meet her fiscal rules. Matthew Amis, investment director at Aberdeen, said that Reeves yesterday had 'offered just enough detail and security for the gilt market to focus away from the UK's fiscal situation until the autumn at least'. But he added: 'Scrutiny will be high and any mis-step from the Chancellor will be reflected in higher gilt yields. 'Big decisions are required from Chancellor Reeves in the autumn.' Ian Stewart, chief economist at Deloitte, said: 'The autumn Budget will be the big test of whether the Government's fiscal plans are holding in the face of global economic headwinds.'

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store