Dear Sleepy Hobbits – why are you allowing Supermarkets power of Big Brother Mass Surveillance?
Thank Christ there is still a journalist doing their job…
Golriz Ghahraman’s Pak’nSave shopping incident highlights police use of Auror retail crime database
- The Auror database of retail crime reports is open to police.
- Police refusing to say how it learned of ex-MP’s shopping incident.
- Australian police champion product as ‘great intel gathering system‘.
The massive privately-owned retail surveillance network which recorded the shopping incident involving former MP Golriz Ghahraman is able to be searched by police even when no complaint has been made, the company co-ordinating it has confirmed.
Police will still not say how they learned of the incident in which Ghahraman was stopped and questioned by store security at the Royal Oak Pak’nSave in the weeks ahead of her High Court case in early October.
Foodstuffs, which operates the supermarket, has told the Herald it did not complain to police about the event which is understood to involve goods worth less than $150.
But Auror, which hosts the surveillance network covering 90% of New Zealand retailers, has confirmed information recorded by its retail clients is available to police.
…as TDB pointed out when this smear against Golriz by Leo Molloy was picked up by the media, the issue wasn’t the allegation against Golriz, the issue was how the Christ the Police gained access to Supermarket mass surveillance networks and why the fuck have we allowed an Australian private company worth $500m to spy on us in the Supermarket duopoly!
The cops gained access to Supermarket facial recognition technology and attempted to insert that evidence in Golriz’s appeal?
WTF?
Look.
I have argued that it is glib and cruel to focus on this latest shoplifting allegation, because if it was true then she really does need help and we have far bigger fish to fry than a former MP (who clearly needs help) shoplifting.
I also have argued that Golriz was wrong to seek an appeal on what was a very fair sentence handed down to her, but the fact the cops attempted to use this footage as evidence against her in that appeal raises serious questions about the mass surveillance powers the Supermarkets now have!
Why are we allowing supermarkets more surveillance powers than the State?
Rotorua woman wrongly kicked out over Foodstuffs facial recognition fail says she’ll keep fighting
A Rotorua woman wrongly kicked out of a supermarket using facial recognition technology says she will keep on fighting its spread.
Foodstuffs says a trial in 25 New Worlds and Pak’nSaves has concluded the technology reduces harmful behaviour shoppers, and its use will carry on.
Te-Ani Solomon said she too would carry on with her case at the Human Rights Review Tribunal, claiming the technology was discriminatory.
“Because I really don’t want this to happen to anybody else and for my own selfishness, I have to, because I’ve never in all my life felt so powerless till I did that night, where I was in front of my son, embarrassed, trying to justify how I wasn’t a thief,” she told RNZ on Friday.
Doesn’t it say something of the power of the Supermarket Duopoly that they are able to film us using face recognition technology?
Why the fuck have we allowed them to have more mass surveillance powers than the Police?
Supermarkets and access to them are a necessity as a part of our food supply chain.
Yes shoplifters and abusive customers are not acceptable, but cutting them from accessing food is more unacceptable!
Using mass surveillance with face recognition technology to troll for all behaviour in public before Police attempt to use that as evidence is such an enormous over reach of power you can see why that aspect of the Police case was quickly shelved in case the public begun asking how the Police knew about the allegation and what legal processes they used to gain access.
Why have we allowed Food Corporations so much power, including filming us? They have an obligation as part of our food supply chain that goes beyond thieves, so why are we allowing them to use theft as a means to spy on us in their shops?
It’s not only spying on us as customers, it’s a skinning of the human worker into drones…
Behind the empty shelves in Woolworths supermarkets across Victoria and New South Wales is a fraught battle between workers and employers that could affect the future of workplaces everywhere.
The dispute has been triggered by stalled enterprise bargaining negotiations between Woolworths and the United Workers Union.
A major factor involves Woolworths introducing a “coaching and productivity framework” to speed up work at distribution centres. This involves surveillance technology and monitoring to direct each worker’s movement and output.
Under this framework, so-called engineered standards or “pick rates” are designed to speed up work on the warehouse floor. Warehouse workers typically wear headsets through which they are told what items to pick and from where, via AI-generated algorithms.
…so the Supermarkets are using mass surveillance on us (which will inevitably be sold on to a 3rd party for psychological harvesting) and using it to reduce their own workers into slaves.
Again, why do the Supermarkets have this level of God like power and are they giving the Police access to that power without any checks and balances?
Why are we allowing an Australian surveillance company worth $500m a monopoly on mass surveillance inside our Supermarket Duopoly with no checks and balances when Police want access!
I know in NZ we like our fascism to be casual, wouldn’t it just be so Nu Zilind that we hand the fucking Supermarkets this level of Big Brother oppression?
The banality of kiwi evil eh?
Stand you coward Kiwis!
Stop sucking corporate supermarket cock!
To paraphrase Fred Dagg, We don’t know how spied on we are.
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Why are we allowing the state to significantly upgrade its surveillance abilities over us, starting with its roll out through one of the most widely used avenues in our country? Two reasons:
1) we don’t care
2) and this is because the lack of media focus, let alone critical analysis on this, is almost non-existent. when we are not urged to care, either by our pollies or their mainstream media machine, then without doubt, we don’t care, we are asleep, just the way our pollies with this to be in this case.
This seems entirely consistent with how complete total vehicle number plate recognition has been rolled out, without any oversight.
1) Councils implement ‘cameras for monitoring traffic’, with pressure from Police
2) Cameras are maintained by private companies, which give full access complete with license plate and facial recognition to police
3) Police use system with no oversight at all, as would have occurred if Police officially owned the cameras (which effectively they do)
I think aurora is a NZ owned $500 million dollar company.
It is a NZ designed system they are using.
And? All the easier to shut them down, globally.
Here is a thought for you Golriz haters.
Just Maybe she was shopping for two people herself and a friend .
1 lot of items she was putting in shopping bag hers in the trolley.
I see that happening at Woolworths/countdown quite often at the checkout .
So you haters need to get a life.
Rnz item posted this afternoon says they will not be laying charges.
@Geoff Lye – totally agree. Also, she had not even reached the check-out counter when she was approached by staff and she said she intended to pay for the items. How can that constitute theft? I would have thought that if she had left the supermarket without paying for the items then yes, that would be theft….but not while she was in the supermarket and before she had reached the check-out. If what she had done at the point she was stopped and spoken to constitutes theft, then every other shopper in the supermarket could also be accused of theft simply for putting their chosen items in their trolley/bag before they reached the check-out.
Exactly.
We need to be looking at the bigger picture, which is the supermarkets are the real thieves and petty shoplifters are just a drop in the ocean where the real sharks play.
And because the supermarkets thieve so much, they expect everyone to be like themselves, and so act accordingly.
Good article from Dame Anne Salmond which needs to be shared.
https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/01/21/anne-salmond-hayeks-bastards/
Interesting from Dame Anne Salmond and sobering. I must resist the desire to have a few vodkas.
Sobering is right and thank you ‘rangi’ for bringing it to wider attention.
Such clarity of thought is uncommon and just what we need.
Well said Ada .If the abusers and criminals starved I would say they have brought it on themselves. If they are that way due to mental issues then that needs to be sorted before they get to the supermarkets they should not be thought of as social agencies.
But I like being watched 24×7 at all times, I’m an exhibitionist.
Oh! I say….
Coming with my camera
Control. People might enjoy? John Christopher’s The Tripods where all adult people are fitted with a type of headpiece that regulates thoughts, emotions etc. Everyone has one put on at a certain age so that’s all right. But hey what if…
The Tripods
Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org
The White Mountains (1967) · The City of Gold and Lead (1967) · The Pool of Fire (1968) · When the Tripods Came (1988) · Editions.
Synopsis · Series · Comic books · Television series
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1grhmKJSKU
once the infrastructure is in place – the dictates will appear. You were seen at Pak n Save; on the street; your car was moving; outside your purchased living hours – please return home to your cell for your consequences. fucking Elysium
Problem is, people have no idea of how bad a surveillance state is to their mental and social well being. They think safe, it must be safe, all the while a tiny bit of their well being crumbles apart. We’re all still have animal brains, and flicking that part of the brain towards fear – as we have done, is bad for us.
That said, corporate scum being spying scum. Come on kiwi, come on mate – I thought you were self reliant. Don’t need machines to catch shop lifters.