The news that Coles and Woolworths are testing facial recognition technology across their networks has been met with a mixture of civil-libertarian unease and grim corporate pragmatism. The raw data is stark, illustrating both the dramatic increase of routine verbal abuse and physical assaults visited on retail staff regularly. Woolworths reports a 26 per cent rise in violent incidents at supermarkets in the past year; Coles has spent somewhere in the region of $200 million across the last two years in an attempt to reduce thefts and store violence against its staff.It’s not surprising, then, that biometric surveillance is seen as an inevitable operational response to a lawless minority. What is collapsing at the checkout is more than inventory control. The violence inflicted on retail workers indicates the unwritten social contract that built modern Australia – our high-trust, low-guardrail way of dealing with one another – is losing its centuries-long ascendancy.Subscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? Fetching latest articles