Claims that behavioural analysis technology encroaches on civil liberties and could be a means of tracking individuals on a mass level throughout their lives have been dismissed by the head of a UK biometrics company.

Reacting to a recent BBC article ‘Big Brother is watching you shop’, Stewart Hefferman, the CEO of OmniPerception challenges the notion that the technology has negative connotations and is an infringement of civil liberties.

Hefferman comments: “The boundary between personalised data and behavioural information is blurred in the article and this tends to sensationalise the content in an unhelpful way.

“Capturing ‘personalised data’ will have data protection issues and is a step too far, so in that respect I agree with the author. The technology will be able to do as he says, but that is quite a different issue from actually having the legal freedom to do so,” he continued.

Hefferman believes behavioural analysis, if anonomised is potentially helpful: “This has been going on for years – how many large retail shops measure and track footfall? It’s behavioural analysis but it is also depersonalised, so not a threat to personal liberties. In fact, in some instances (fire, evacuation, etc) actually tracking behaviour might save lives! What a negative picture the article paints!”

The article uses the example of Germany where developers have placed video cameras into street advertisements, attempting to discern people’s emotional reactions to the ads.

Hefferman points out that personalised advertising is already a reality and not somewhere in the future: “Has [the writer] ever used Amazon or the plethora of other online stores that magically seem to know what I want to buy? Is it personalised, yes. Is it a misuse of my personal data – no because they don’t have it. They just know that customer ID ‘XYZ’ likes classical or jazz CDs etc.

 “One area where I do agree is linking the behavioural patterns with my actual data should not take place without my explicit agreement – and this can certainly be done via some legal framework.”