Click to copy

Email: CustomerServices@southerncoops.co.uk

To: Mark Smith, CEO Southern Co-operative

Dear Mr Smith

I am writing to ask you to immediately stop using live facial recognition in your stores.

I was alarmed to discover that the Southern Co-op is operating facial recognition surveillance at 35 stores. This is a drastic, disproportionate intrusion of mine and other customers’ privacy.

I have often shopped at the Southern Co-op, but I will no longer be a customer at any Co-op stores if you continue to use facial recognition.

Live facial recognition surveillance has well-evidenced issues with privacy, inaccuracy, and race and gender discrimination.

The technology you are using steals the facial biometric data – information as sensitive as a fingerprint – of every customer entering the store to check them against your privately created watch list. I am concerned that I, my friends or family could be wrongly flagged in your stores, since live facial recognition has produced 93% false positive matches in England.

To discover that a supposedly ethical company such as yours is secretly using this rights-abusive surveillance technology in the UK is deeply chilling. Live facial recognition surveillance is more commonly seen in dictatorships than democracies. Rights groups around the world are fighting facial recognition. To see the Co-op contributing to a watchlist society and a surveillance environment in the UK is deeply disappointing.

This is a serious error of judgement by Southern Co-op. I urge you: please immediately cease all use of live facial recognition in your stores.

Kind regards,

[Your name].