The world's leading retail crime intelligence platform, Auror, has launched its new facial recognition system, Auror Subject Recognition, which is now live in UK stores, keeping frontline retail workers safe through real-time alerts to prevent known high-harm offenders from further acts of violence and robbery.
Auror Subject Recognition takes a unique approach to the use of live facial recognition technology (FRT) in retail by leveraging a retailer’s own existing crime information held within the Auror platform and integrating with world-class FRT providers. It then wraps around the right data governance and safeguards to ensure retailers not only prevent crime in their stores, but also meet their compliance obligations.
Auror’s Global Vice President of Trust and Safety, Nick McDonnell, said “we strongly believe live FRT will have a meaningful impact on store safety in the face of high levels of violent and threatening retail crime, but we know it's critical to get this right for both retailers and the privacy of good, honest shoppers”.
“It’s great to partner with leading UK retailers to help keep their stores safe using this technology. Retailers know how important it is to retain responsibility and control of their own information, and to know where the data they collect about crime ends up,” he said.
“With Subject Recognition, we’re not talking about some dystopian future of ‘national master watchlists’ or sharing retailer information with third parties to unknown ends. It gives retailers control and comfort in their compliance position by not allowing their watchlists to be merged with other organisations or shared far and wide.
“This is a human-centred tool that simply helps frontline colleagues make better decisions based on a retailer’s information about past offending. It gives them the context on whether an individual has been violent or used a weapon before, and they can decide how they want to respond - it’s a very human approach and isn’t making any key decisions for them, or automatically flooding police with alerts.
“The right safeguards and data governance are critical because if you don’t respect data accountability, it can ruin the promise of this important safety tech for the whole sector for years to come. As a sector, it’s so important to get the tech right, because it will be game-changing for public safety in retail settings.”
Pilot results from other jurisdictions where retailers are using Subject Recognition show a significant drop in high-harm incidents, with almost all verified alerts resulting in no further safety incident occurring, meaning frontline workers have the context to respond appropriately and go home safe at the end of their shift.
“It’s the effectiveness of the alerting, the flexibility of the frontline teams to respond appropriately, and the deterrence of offenders because FRT is used in stores that combine to drive these outcomes,” Nick said.
Unlike some providers, Subject Recognition does not allow a retailer to tag information in their database with sensitive information such as race, ethnicity, religion, political affiliation, or sexual orientation - crucially preventing the FRT from operating on that type of data.
Retailers can configure system-level thresholds for serious offending to create their watchlists, while meeting their requirements of proportionality, and accountability for their data. Non-match data is discarded instantly, and multiple points of ‘human-in-the-loop’ give retailers the confidence that there is no automated decision-making at key steps.
Auror UK retailer data this year shows the top 10 per cent of offenders are responsible for almost 70 per cent of retail crime. For some retailers, that figure is more than 80 per cent of total crime in their stores.
Violence in UK retail stores increased by another 13 per cent so far this year according to Auror, and insights show one in every 10 crime events involve violence or weapons.
“We all know retail crime is brazen, violent and organised, but the dedicated work by retailers and police across the country has been fantastic and genuinely world-leading,” Nick said.
“The cross-sector collaboration and intense focus on tackling the problem is making a difference to not only the frontline retail colleagues that serve their communities every day, but to everyday shoppers and families that enjoy the vibrancy of the UK's high streets.”
For more information about Auror Subject Recognition, visit the website.
ENDS
Notes to editors
Key facts about Auror Subject Recognition:
- It can only ever be used for crime prevention and safety purposes. Not for profiling, categorisation, in-store tracking or marketing purposes.
- Potential bias tags are prohibited from being entered in Auror (i.e. race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or religion).
- Retailers cannot access another retailer’s person of interest (POI) list, and lists are not merged to form centralised ‘master’ lists. Police cannot access retailer POI lists.
- POI lists are based on a retailer's own information about previous high-harm offending that meet a strict criteria set by the retailer.
- If there is no match, all information is discarded instantly and never stored. Even for matches, biometric template data is never stored in the cloud.
- A human is always in the loop on key decisions.
- Built-in transparency and auditability tools allow retailers to record outcomes of alerts.
About Auror
Auror is a global software company which provides a retail crime intelligence platform to the world’s leading retailers to record potential crime in their stores after it occurs, better collaborate with law enforcement on crime, and create safer stores for all.
Auror allows retailers to record events in a secure and structured way, helping them connect the dots to identify prolific and organised offenders. This information empowers retailers to make informed decisions to protect their people, customers, and property, and address the large scale of retail crime impacting our communities.
Globally, Auror is used by more than 85,000 retail stores and in more than 3,500 law enforcement agencies across North America, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
