Has the surveillance in stores gone too far?

Sainsbury's is tightening controls on its self-service checkouts. Not only will customers in some stores be filmed up close while they're packing their groceries, but if something seems wrong, they may be shown a video of the footage with a message: "The last item appears not to have been scanned. Please check that you've scanned it correctly before continuing."

Britain is fast becoming a surveillance society. Camera arrays are part of the inventory on the streets and in supermarkets and shops. Some shops even use facial recognition.

Sainsbury's and other supermarket executives have missed something essential about their customers, which can be summed up very simply: we are all human. And as human beings, we do not want to be constantly watched and controlled.

Given their relentless enthusiasm for finding new ways to control, it seems that leaders don't understand this. Think about how you feel when someone is standing over you, watching you try to complete a complex practical task. At some point, you'll probably hint that it's getting on your nerves.

“It’s rude to stare,” our elders told us as children, instilling in our children the fact that people tend to feel uncomfortable when we observe them closely. It doesn’t matter whether the staring is out of innocent curiosity or full of predatory intent; it can still make us feel uncomfortable.

The television show Big Brother may be fascinating because a group of people voluntarily put themselves in a position where they are under constant surveillance. How can they endure it, the others wonder.

Supermarket owners cite shoplifting as a reason for increasing surveillance infrastructure.

Police recorded 516,971 shoplifting offences in 2024 alone, a 20% increase on 429,873 offences in 2023 and the highest since records began in 2003, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics in the UK.

The increase is not only related to the rise in food prices that followed Covid, but also to the replacement of staffed cash registers with self-service machines.