Loblaw’s body camera pilot rolls out in Toronto, raising privacy concerns

"Hey!" Galen said excitedly, "What if, instead of reducing prices for our customer, we go all in on investing huge sums of money on a Loblaws police state!". All the old white guys raised their top hats in agreement.

Though the goal of the program appears to be safety, the cameras leave a sour taste with James Turk — the director of Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University. He argued the program exposes an underlying issue where Loblaw no longer employs enough actual people to handle conflict efficiently by defending one another in numbers.

“They’re trying to do everything they can to eliminate the number of staff by having these automated checkouts and so forth,” he said. “In the days when there were more staff, if one member was having a problem and loud voices were raised, having other staff around was an important protection.”

If I'm frustrated by a lack of service in a corporate store, I know it's the fault of a business decision to not have adequate staffing. I avoid these stores. In stores "we don't accept any rudeness to our colleagues" or on phones "we're experiencing a surge in call volume" are just codes for "we're deliberately understaffing, we expect this will frustrate customers, and rather than staff adequately we've decided to lie to and police customers"

According to Loblaw, the cameras are only worn by trained store teams, including asset protection representatives, security and management.

[However] At the Parkdale Shoppers location, TorontoToday also witnessed cashiers wearing them.

Loblaw said if a camera is turned on, the employees are trained to verbally inform those around them and ensure everyone is aware.

As if!

Loblaw said stores choosing to deploy the body cameras are supposed to have signage at their entrances to inform customers of their use. If any footage collected is not required for police investigation, it’s deleted within 72 hours, the company said.

However, at the Shoppers in Parkdale on Thursday, TorontoToday could not locate signage specifically pertaining to the body cameras, though there were signs indicating that security cameras are in operation.

Not that I don't think this is disgustingly dystopian, but I kinda fail to see why this would raise privacy concerns. There are security cameras everywhere in Loblaws, or any other big box store. What's the difference between a camera on the ceiling and a camera on an employee's neck, privacy-wise?