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Today in Focus

Is Big Brother watching you shop?

Today in Focus

The Guardian

News, Daily News

4.65.9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 May 2026

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From supermarkets to corner shops, live facial recognition could be coming to retailers near you. Jessica Murray on the AI systems increasingly used by the police and stores. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is The Guardian. Today, coming to a store near you, the rise of the day around lunchtime

0:28.6

to do my daily shop as I would normally do.

0:33.6

Anything that fits in a basket, as far as I'm'm concerned I don't need an awful lot of things

0:37.9

I know what I need

0:38.7

I'm in and out

0:39.5

there was a couple of things

0:41.7

that I was thinking of getting

0:43.0

but as I entered the store

0:45.4

and I noticed almost straight away

0:47.6

that the security guard

0:48.5

was following me

0:49.2

so I'd come down the second aisle

0:53.1

and I noticed a lady and was sort of drawn to the fact that she was looking at me.

1:00.0

And three people surrounded me. It looked like one of them was a security guard.

1:06.5

So at that point I felt like I could confront him and ask him if he was following me.

1:11.7

And then briskly walked towards me and said,

1:14.8

excuse me, do you mind just putting everything down and leaving the building now?

1:19.0

So I was really upset.

1:20.7

It was in front of loads of people.

1:22.3

It was a busy store on a Saturday.

1:24.7

It was really embarrassed.

1:27.0

You didn't shock and your head spinning. You're trying to make sense of the whole thing.

...

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