Secret filming in stores is just ‘tip of the iceberg’
Shoppers are rapidly losing their privacy, warn campaigners
SeCreT filming in shops is just the tip of the surveillance iceberg, campaigners said yesterday.
The warning came after the Mail exposed how shops including Tesco, Boots, Sainsbury’s and B&Q had allowed a little-known agency to film customers.
SBXL used the in-store footage to provide advice on how to manipulate and increase sales, based on close analysis of behaviour and facial expressions. Some of the film was put on YouTube in apparent violation of data protection laws.
The Information Commissioner is vowing to bring the full force of the law against the ‘invasive’ practice of shops secretly filming customers. Writing in today’s Mail, elizabeth Denham says: ‘I don’t expect to have to check whether I’m being watched by secret cameras when I’m deciding what cheese to buy, or picking between easy or healthy lunch options.
‘Filming like this raises a number of privacy concerns. We’ll be looking into this, and acting if we suspect the law has been broken. Whether people are buying apples or liking a social media post, they have a right to expect the law is being followed.’
Campaigners, business groups and privacy experts have called for stricter laws against surveillance.
Sir Vince Cable said the law may need to be changed. ‘This is actually a modest example of the subversive manipulation of consumers that could come about with the increased use of artificial intelligence,’ said the Liberal Democrat leader. ‘We may need to legislate to protect consumer rights.’
Silkie Carlo, director of Big Brother Watch, said the campaign group had lodged a formal complaint with the ICO over SBXL. She added: ‘It is quite chilling to see innocent shoppers being filmed from store shelves, seemingly unaware that their behaviour is being analysed and manipulated. ‘People in Britain are constantly recorded and we are rapidly losing our privacy. We fear that this could be the tip of the iceberg of privacy breaches by aggressive marketing companies.’ Jim Killock, director of the Open rights Group, which campaigns for digital privacy, warned that the combination of economic pressure on the high street and cheaper surveillance equipment meant shops would try out more intrusive methods. As well as filming in supermarkets and high street shops, SBXL says it has worked with multinationals including PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever and L’Oreal.
Its sales director boasted to the Mail’s undercover reporter that it could ‘manipulate’ people’s emotions and make them ‘buy something that they didn’t necessarily intend to buy’.
A spokesman for SBXL said it has ‘ never carried out covert recording of customers in stores’ with research ‘only ever carried out with the full co-operation from the public involved’.
A Boots spokesman said ‘ clear signage was placed directly next
‘Analysed and manipulated’
to the display and at store entrances to inform customers that filming was taking place for market research purposes’ and it gave no permission for footage to be uploaded to YouTube.
A spokesman for Tesco said it ‘does not covertly film customers in stores nor would we allow any other company to do so’.
A Sainsbury’s spokesman said: ‘We do not work with this company and have never had a direct relationship with them.’
PepsiCo strongly denied it had engaged in filming with SBXL.
Unilever said shoppers would be made aware of any in-store filming. Coca-Cola and B&Q said they had not worked with SBXL for some years, and L’Oreal said it had no record of working with it within the past five years.