Supermarkets are shoplifting data from their customers

Data harvesting at the supermarket began with ‘loyalty cards’. The incentives are everywhere to be seen: discounts and bonuses for cardholders, and the price differential is increasing. Most of the special offers at Sainsbury’s are for Nectar cardholders. A bag of KP peanuts at Tesco, for example, is £2 on Clubcard, but £3 otherwise. For regular customers, it seems sensible to register, and take advantage of the reductions, particularly at a time of relentless food price inflation. Every little helps….

As I argued on Country Squire two years ago, loyalty cards should be treated with caution. The marketing motive is not merely to reward customers with lower shopping cost (thereby reducing profitability). The bigger beneficiaries are the third-party companies with whom supermarkets share your data. Noah Yuval Harari may be right in predicting our future status as ‘useless eaters’, but for now we are useful eaters. There is much to be gained from the comprehensive information gathered on every aspect of our lives. Data have become a valuable commodity, although we may be unaware of how our every move is tracked.

Supermarket loyalty cards are playing an important part in the development of a digital control grid.

The Co-operative Society has given discount to members since the late nineteenth century, although its close association with the Fabian Society (whose sinister motto is a wolf in sheep’s clothing) should be noted. I remember Green Shield stamps in the Seventies. Then in the Nineties some supermarkets introduced electronic bonus cards to customers, loading points at the checkout for customers to save or use as payment.

Nowadays joining any loyalty scheme is done online. Soon the physical cards will be withdrawn, as they are nothing but a legacy of the old physical world. The infamous World Economic Forum video featuring the line ‘you will own nothing, and be happy’ also emphasises that people will have no privacy. The global corporate-state regime will know everything about you. Like digital currency, loyalty cards will be programmable to the level of individual curtailment or enhancement.

Loss of privacy is most blatant in the supermarkets’ installation of AI-assisted facial recognition technology. If you use the so-called ‘self-service’ tills (an oxymoron, as service is something that you receive, not do to yourself), you are agreeing to a level of monitoring that would have made eighteenth-century designer of the ‘Panopticon’ Jeremy Bentham blush.

I refuse to use them, just as I eschew loyalty cards, because I realise that neither of these developments are for customers’ benefit. Safety and price cuts are readily appealing to the unthinking masses who do not see that they are being lured into a trap. .Another motive for me (as a trade union officer) is to protect jobs. Don’t customers care that once the human checkouts are removed, the nice lady at the till will be redundant?

The cameras at the auto-tills are not just to deter shoplifting. An officially-stated purpose is age verification. The Japanese company Fujitsu, which was involved in the Post Office / Horizon computer scandal (leading to unfair prosecution, and some cases of suicide, among stricken postmasters across the country), gained government approval for its facial analysis tool. But this is not merely to stop an under-age youngster from buying a litre or cider. This it total digital surveillance, using your biometric data, which are then passed to other companies without your permission.

The age of AI is upon us, and ethical safeguards are being cast aside. These images, recording your facial features and emotional state, are taken with no informed consent. There is no regard for your dignity, and no watchdog to check that your data are anonymised and only retained for a stipulated time period. .Data protection laws are seemingly breached yet the authorities do nothing to stop this mass data theft, because it is all part of the agenda to create a global technocracy.

In the coming ’15-minute cities’, a policy promoted as the guaranteed provision of vital amenities and services within walking or cycling distance from home, supermarket cameras will be put to more radical use. The loyalty scheme will be the carrot, and the facial recognition the stick. But in practice, these will become integrated. In the near future, customers won’t use a card to get their discount; their entry to the store will have already identified them, and the value of goods purchased will be automatically deducted from their bank account. Customers will be individually limited in what they can buy, with rationing of alcohol, meat and any foodstuffs in short supply, but also shops outside the customer’s 15-minute zone will either charge more or deny access.

What can you do to avoid this dehumanising matrix? As much as possibly, use independent greengrocers, butchers, bakeries, fishmongers, etc. Most of the proprietors willingly take cash. As fellow members of the community they know the true meaning of loyalty, and facial recognition is knowing you as a human being.