You fools are allowing Supermarkets to use facial recognition
I just don’t understand Kiwis sometimes, why on earth would you give the fucking Supermarkets face recognition technology that not even the bloody Police have???
Stage set for much more facial recognition in shops
The number plate-spotting company at the heart of a Court of Appeal challenge is now offering facial recognition inside shops.
At stores that sign up to use Auror’s new system, everyone who enters will have a temporary biometric template made of them.
The system would check the template against the store’s own list of risky people, via facial recognition software provided by a third undisclosed company.
If no match is found, the template is immediately dumped, according to Auror’s website, about the new Subject Recognition system.
“It cannot in any way be used for profiling, prediction, tracking, monitoring behavior or targeted marketing purposes,” it said.
Auror already has automated number-plate recognition (ANPR) technology widely spread across the country. Briscoes, Mitre 10, Woolworths and Z Energy, among others, use it, according to the website.
Facial recognition technology is more controversial, as it captures and compares your face (called a biometric).
The government has backed a push by big retailers to use it much more, following a “cautious tick” from the privacy commissioner in June, after Foodstuffs ran a trial of facial recognition.
Auror met Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith twice in December 2024 and last month to talk about facial recognition technology and “pragmatic policy interventions NZ could look at to help prevent and tackle crime”, according to internal documents RNZ obtained under the Official Information Act.
Auror’s non-facial recognition systems are already the leading generator of volume (including retail) crime to police 10-12,000 retail crime reports per month to police.
I love New Zealand and I love Kiwis, but sometimes your acquiescence to power bewilders me.
Why the fuck are you allowing these pricks mass surveillance powers we don’t even give to the State???
The vast power of the Supermarkets not only give them economic manipulation, they also have mass surveillance powers with their face recognition technology and external cameras tracking licence plates, so much so that the Cops have jumped in use of them for warrantless mass surveillance trawling!
Here is the little tech nark from Auror, who run the mass surveillance networks linked up to the Police in our Supermarket Duopoly, arguing why their mass surveillance is so important and how our civil liberties mean nothing…
Just because it happens in a shop doesn’t make it any less of a crime – Opinion
THREE KEY FACTS
- The Auror database of retail crime reports was highlighted in the case of former MP Golriz Ghahraman and a shopping incident at a Pak’nSave supermarket.
- Auror launched as a start-up in 2012, is now worth an estimated $500 million and has more than 50% of the retail market in Australia, a large and growing client base in the United States and strong interest in Britain.
- A Retail NZ survey found 92% of retailers contacted had experienced crime in the year to August 2023.
We have a serious, and often violent, retail crime issue in this country.
Almost 20% of all retail crime events in New Zealand last year involved verbal or physical abuse, intimidation, threats, or violence – and even the use of weapons.
The data is also clear – 10% of offenders are causing more than 60% of the harm. What’s worse is that those repeat offenders are four times more likely to be aggressive.
Some want us to think of this as a victimless crime, because it happens at a supermarket or a service station.
…what a load of emotionally manipulative bullshit.
Just because there are a few serious retail crime incidents, doesn’t mean we should allow the Supermarket Duopoly who have enormous power to run facial recognition software in real time for the Police without a search warrant!
The sanctimonious prick then attempts to defend the use of this mass surveillance power by using workers…
The reality is these incidents can have immeasurable impacts on frontline workers, the vibrancy of our community hubs and the social fabric of our nation. What’s more, we all take a financial hit in the cost of our goods, to make up for the more than $2 million a day that retail crime costs Kiwi businesses.
People are frontline workers, not corporate entities – your teenager in their first job, your 65-year-old grandmother who has spent decades working retail, and everyone in between.
…FFS.
People, read this…
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.
…these very same surveillance technologies that are supposedly protecting workers are also being used to skin them into drones, don’t pretend to give a shit about the workers when it is this surveillance technology that is breaking them!
The little kiwi Tech Nark continues…
Claims of a “surveillance state” are flippant and outright wrong.
…stop right there, that’s a fucking lie!
- The Office of the Privacy Commissioner is seeking information about a shopping incident involving ex-MP.
- The move follows Herald reporting that police attempted to use the incident in a High Court appeal.
- Australian Senator warns of creeping surveillance by private companies.
Auror has also been subject to concern over the degree to which it intrudes on the privacy of others and its relationship with law enforcement.
In 2022, the Herald revealed police had invented crimes to get around Auror’s rules so officers could track cars using its automatic licence plate recognition system. The Herald also revealed police went into what Auror calls a “partnership” without carrying out a proper privacy assessment.
It has also been revealed that neither police or privacy officials have any idea how many CCTV cameras are linked to the Auror network.
In Australia, Senator for New South Wales David Shoebridge raised concerns about Auror after it was revealed Australian Federal Police had signed up to the system – like New Zealand police – without doing proper privacy checks.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner told the Herald it had opened an investigation into Auror in February 2024. It was not currently investigating the company but “have provided guidance to Auror to assist it in meeting its privacy obligations”.
The spokeswoman said the advice was “particularly as to whether the collection of personal information is necessary to its business and reasonable steps to notify individuals, or ensure awareness, of” the collection of people’s information.
Shoebridge, whose portfolios include digital rights and justice, told the Herald his concerns remained with systems similar to Auror shown to have issues with accuracy and confidentiality.
“One of the real dangers in this space about online data and facial recognition is this push by those who are trying to profit from it that it is inevitable, that we have to give up on any kind of privacy. That’s patently false. This is not inevitable.”
Shoebridge said Australians and New Zealanders “should be able to go about their daily lives without being secretly surveilled by private entities and the state”.
On Auror’s claim of covering 90% of retail space, he said: “It’s like a private surveillance state that is largely unregulated and would be tracking New Zealanders multiple times a day.”
…the rest of the Tech Narks argument is self aggrandising garbage made by someone who has never had their power challenged before because Kiwis are so pathetic at standing up for their own rights.
Why the Christ have we allowed Supermarkets 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!
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?
Fight back by always stealing groceries through the self check out.
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It it helps to cut down on dickheads walking out of supermarkets with hundreds of dollars of eye fillet in their hands without paying and abusing staff on their way out I’m all for it – have seen this happen multiple times and always the same people.
Amen to that !
North Korea uses cameras to catch people doing things the Government doesn’t like, found doing it you are shot.
New Zealanders by and large are pussycats when it comes to authority of this nature. Kiwis meekly lined up in their thousands to get snapped when photo driver licenses were introduced. The technology of facial recognition is still developing and it has faults particularly with Polynesian/Asian people–why allow a for profit company such intervention in our lives?
The supermarket duopoly has a lot of power because one way or another, eventually the vast majority of us end up at one of their stores. Get banned and who knows the flow on effect–other family members? someone else parking your car?
I agree with Martyn–hit them at the self checkout.
Dumb idea. You could get nabbed for shoplifting. Not a smart way to protest this surveillance at all. Where the fuck is the privacy commission.
Keep meowing tiger
Do the opposition parties have a civil liberties policy on this? If they do they would need the skills to say it out loud without being framed as procrime.
I think you could order online to escape surveillance although they would still obtain most of your information anyway. Your last line probably indicates why there is such a demand from shops for these systems, although I would prefer to see lower grocery prices and a reduction in other living costs, so people can afford to eat instead of resorting to theft. I use the checkout as I want to support people who have jobs there and do my shopping at off-peak times to avoid the queues.
Having never stolen a thing in my life I feel it’s an imposition.
The privacy commissioner giving a ‘cautious tick’ is a joke. A tick is a tick. There’s nothing cautious about it unless it comes with the strong proviso that all recognition technology is immediately removed if even one person is wrongly accused.
Exactly. But several people have already been accused, one a mother in front of her children and nothing has been done. At the least she should sue them for millions. Oh but hang on, can’t sue in NZ or you have to be very rich to do it.
This technology costs a fortune. That cost is passed on to the consumer.
This technology gathers information that I contend should be private. None of us wish our movements and transactions tracked by government or commerce.
This technology requires the massive use of electricity and infrastructure which is becoming scarcer. The cost will be passed on to you and I.
ll up it’s a bad idea, but our useless Parliament doesn’t debate anything like this.
Every credit card purchase or loyalty card use tracks you ,security camera both personnal and commercial track you,every mobile phone call tracks you so supermarkets using technology to stop criminals seems OK with me as I do not steal.
Almost everyone has a smartphone that knows most things about them.
It’s the facial recognition aspect, I think. They know what we look like.
Yes, we’re being tracked with all sorts of things and now talk of not being able to use cash in not too distant future. Looks like I’m going to starve.
As Jacqueline says, no one likes to feel they are being stalked. It’s almost that.
This is very concerning when you add in the new proposed changes to citizens arrest laws – Foodies and Progressive will hire thugs to manage the thugs? Prepare for the fireworks!
We just have to decide whether this is a thing we want in our society or not.
Do we want a society where here the shop watches your face and every move,
Where the government tells you what to inject in your arm,
Where the law tells you you are a criminal or supporting terror by demanding not to support a two year bombing campaign on a civilian city, with daily war crimes
Where the company who said their formation would never affect local prices, just expect gives 9 dollar butter , and other unaffordable products; like electricity, subsiding corporate date centres, housing as profit wells for landlords, rates paying for things the central government should be taxing to pay for, all problems made here under our control.
Do we want to continue to tax the majority of people out of the income they need for survival, while allowing the private-profit existence ta to grow? To continue to insist climate change is a cost we must pay, when the beneficiaries of all the many decades of exploitation are easily identifiable, by their bank accounts, sucking up the national surplus as if it belongs to them, externalising all cots from their industries on to the nation and state?
Do we really want to keep outsourcing credit and debt to global private sharks, and only dealing with the Imperialist Western mafia who we thing we belong to because of our language? when if we imagine we spoke Spanish our identity and reality really fits much closer to another exploited South American nation, just 1000x less self-aware?
It is a choice. We dont need all the answers. e just got to stop denying the problem, slow down. And stop voting for those dildoes Labour and National, and their power cords ACT and NZFirst. Vote for real locals for the electorate seats, and anyone else for the party vote.
The system is already decades broken, we just have to tear the veil.