The ICO has today released its review of Facewatch’s use of facial recognition technology. You can read its findings here: https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/news-and-blogs/2023/03/balancing-people-s-privacy-rights-with-the-need-to-prevent-crime/

Southern Co-op statement:

We would like to thank the ICO for its detailed independent investigation and praise Facewatch for its proactivity in making improvements to its product and in upholding our high expectations. Our use of facial recognition technology is an important step forward in our work to protect our store colleagues from unacceptable violence and abuse whist taking our customers’ rights extremely seriously. In the small number of our stores where we use this technology, there is just one camera at the store entrance. Using facial recognition in this limited way continues to improve the safety of our store colleagues alongside a range of other measures we’re using to tackle crime.