Madeleine Stone, of the campaign group Big Brother Watch, is concerned about the slow creep of facial recognition technology.

“It is unacceptable to have police and private companies writing their own rules on the use of such a powerful surveillance technology,” she says. “We urgently need a democratic, lawful approach to the role of facial biometrics in Britain, but so far there hasn’t even been a parliamentary debate on it.”

Glad they devoted 3 whole sentences about this more than halfway down the article /s

Also, no mention of machine learning training bias or false positive rates of the existing technology? There's so much which could have been fleshed out in this article.

There was a case in Canada a few years ago

Report from the privacy commissioner: https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/opc-news/news-and-announcements/2020/nr-c_201029/

Customers not aware that their sensitive biometrics information was gathered

October 29, 2020 – Cadillac Fairview – one of North America’s largest commercial real estate companies – embedded cameras inside their digital information kiosks at 12 shopping malls across Canada and used facial recognition technology without their customers’ knowledge or consent, an investigation by the federal, Alberta and BC Privacy Commissioners has found.

The goal, the company said, was to analyze the age and gender of shoppers and not to identify individuals. Cadillac Fairview also asserted that shoppers were made aware of the activity via decals it had placed on shopping mall entry doors that referred to their privacy policy – a measure the Commissioners determined was insufficient.

Cadillac Fairview also asserted that it was not collecting personal information, since the images taken by camera were briefly analyzed then deleted. However, the Commissioners found that Cadillac Fairview did collect personal information, and contravened privacy laws by failing to obtain meaningful consent as they collected the 5 million images with small, inconspicuous cameras. Cadillac Fairview also used video analytics to collect and analyze sensitive biometric information of customers.

In one store, he says one in four customers were stealing something before the technology was rolled out.

So far, more surveillance has not stopped shoplifting. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show retail theft rose by 22pc in the year to September.

If 1 in 4 people are stealing then there's some major problems going on. I really wish they'd mention what products are getting stolen.

For Facewatch’s Gordon, the argument against using the technology is weak. “Normal customers aren’t going to be tracked and traced. The idea that they are is complete rubbish."

In other words: Yes we have the means, but the idea we would abuse profitable data already available to us is absurd.

At least this is working as intended:

Supermarkets gripe that data protection laws are an obstacle. Walker says that GDPR laws have prevented managers at different Iceland stores from sharing photos of shoplifters across WhatsApp groups

Nonetheless...

Mask up.

Given how fabulously facial recognition works if you aren't white, I predict nothing but good outcomes from this anti-crime venture.

another excellent reason to always wear a mask in enclosed spaces

That’s going to be hard with a mask on