Golriz Ghahraman’s Pak’nSave shopping ‘incident’ highlights police use of Auror retail crime database

• The Auror database of retail crime reports is open to police.
• Police refusing to say how it learned of ex-MP’s shopping incident.
• Australian police champion product as ‘great intel gathering system‘.

The massive privately-owned retail surveillance network which recorded the shopping incident involving former MP Golriz Ghahraman is able to be searched by police even when no complaint has been made, the company co-ordinating it has confirmed.

Police will still not say how they learned of the incident in which Ghahraman was stopped and questioned by store security at the Royal Oak Pak’nSave in the weeks ahead of her High Court case in early October.

Foodstuffs, which operates the supermarket, has told the Herald it did not complain to police about the event which is understood to involve goods worth less than $150.

But Auror, which hosts the surveillance network covering 90% of New Zealand retailers, has confirmed information recorded by its retail clients is available to police.

“By using Auror, retailers choose to make this information available to law enforcement and also have the option to directly report to them via the software. Retailers determine what information they enter,” a spokesman said.

Auror launched as a start-up in 2012 and is now worth an estimated $500 million, according to the Australian Financial Review, with more than 50% of the retail market in Australia, a large and growing client base in the United States and strong interest in Britain.

The system aimed to streamline reporting of retail crime and provide clients – including service stations, supermarkets and big box stores – a means of building a database of known thieves, their associates and the vehicles to which they are linked.

The question of how police learned of the incident was key as, within weeks, officers attempted to include the matter in Ghahraman’s High Court appeal against her sentence on four counts of shoplifting from high-end fashion stores. The police attempt to do so was unsuccessful - as was Ghahraman’s appeal.

The revelations of shoplifting from boutiques cost Ghahraman her political career.

Former Green MP Golriz Ghahraman arriving at the Auckland District Court to face shoplifting charges in March 2024.

Foodstuffs logs about 20,000 incidents into Auror every year and included the incident involving Ghahraman. The number of reports goes into a pool of material supplied by Auror’s other customers to which police have access unless a store deliberately excludes police from viewing.

Ghahraman was shopping at the Royal Oak Pak’nSave store, placing items alternately into a shopping trolley or into a shopping bag that was in the trolley, and had yet to approach the checkout area.

A Foodstuffs spokesperson told the Herald on Friday the company does not generally complain to police over low-level crime.

The spokesperson said: “We ask our store teams to log every incident of shoplifting into our retail crime reporting platform which is then made visible to the police who determine what to do next. For low-level offending like you’ve described, we don’t engage directly with the police.”

Auror has also faced questions in Australia after it emerged it was being used by Australian Federal Police without any privacy assessments.

In emails released through freedom of information laws, one officer said: “It’s been a great intel gathering system for me. I’ve found some incidents are placed on Auror, but not reported to police.”

In New Zealand, police faced questions over its use of Auror in 2022 when the Herald revealed officers had falsely invented crimes to improve access to Auror’s number-plate tracking functions.

Golriz Ghahraman in her office at Parliament in December 2022 when she was a Green MP. Photo / Mark Mitchell

That led to claims of over-reach and police carrying out an audit of the system. This revealed a small number of users had abused the system and new rules around searching and tracking of number plates were put in place.

In the retail space, police have refused to answer questions about whether they used the Auror system to identify the Royal Oak incident. Police have also refused to answer questions about their attempt to introduce the Royal Oak incident into Gharaman’s High Court appeal.

In a statement, police said: “In order to preserve the integrity of the investigation, police are not in a position to comment further while we continue to investigate the complaint.”

Auror was founded by Phil Thomson, James Corbett, and Tom Batterbury just over a decade ago with their success acknowledged in 2022 with the EY Entrepreneur of the Year New Zealand.

It was intended as a retail crime reporting platform with data from police showing around 80% of shoplifting and theft reports are made through the system.

The relationship with police is so close that documents held by the Herald show it referred to as a “partnership”.

A 2018 contract with Auror shows how police, who used the system hundreds of times a day, would have access to “information, images, and recordings of incidents and associated people and vehicles supplied by businesses”.

It also says police would “provide the following assistance to Auror”, including taking part in “case studies that are created in partnership with Auror”, to “speak to other police services about police’s use of the platform and the outcomes achieved” and to “allow police personnel to attend events organised by Auror”.

Auror co-founders James Corbett (left), Phil Thomson and Tom Batterbury.

The Auror system allows retail staff to upload details of an alleged shoplifting or theft incident - or other alleged crimes - including a description and photograph of an individual, or their associates, or vehicles to which they are linked.

It allows users to match incidents across retail networks, to identify gangs of thieves and to estimate the places and times they are most active - and the types of goods and stores they are most likely to target.

Elements of the system are automated, such as tracking of vehicle number plates, although the company says it does not do “live” facial recognition.

The company’s rapid expansion and success has seen it included on the Deloitte Fast 50 list as it signed up some of the world’s largest retailers including Walmart and Woolworths.

Correction: Foodstuffs was previously reported as saying it “did not proactively make a complaint to police”. It has clarified that it was speaking generally rather than in response to questions about Ghahraman and it did not “engage directly with the police” on low-level crime.

David Fisher is based in Northland and has worked as a journalist for more than 30 years, winning multiple journalism awards including being twice named Reporter of the Year and being selected as one of a small number of Wolfson Press Fellows to Wolfson College, Cambridge. He joined the Herald in 2004.

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