Stores use China’s face ID cameras

A SUPERMARKET chain is using facial-recognition cameras made by a Chinese state-owned company, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Southern Co-op is believed to have installed Hikvision equipment to monitor and store customers’ images at up to 35 shops.

It comes despite calls by MPs for a ban on the use of Hikvision, which has been blacklisted by US authorities because its cameras have been used in the repression of the Muslim-minority Uighurs in China, including inside internment camps.

An investigation by video-surveillance researchers at IPVM found Hikvision facial-recognition devices at nine stores in outlets in Southampton and Portsmouth, while the technology is also in shops in West London, Bristol and Chichester. The Hikvision cameras form part of a surveillance system provided to Southern Co-op by the firm Facewatch. It said it keeps a database of the faces of ‘subjects of interest’ for two years, but unmatched faces are ‘deleted instantly’.

Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, a member of the China Research Group which advocates a more hawkish approach to Beijing, said: ‘I understand that high-tech security cameras are important for shops like Southern Co-Op, but using cameras from a company like Hikvision isn’t the answer.’

A Southern Co-op spokeswoman said: ‘No facial images from the platform are shared with any other organisation. Our limited and targeted use of this technology is only where there is a high level of crime and is used to protect our store colleagues from assaults and violence.’

Hikvision said it was ‘committed to upholding the right to privacy’.