A man was ordered to leave a supermarket in London after staff misidentified him using controversial new facial recognition technology.
Warren Rajah was told to abandon his shopping and leave the local store he has been using for a number of years after an “Orwellian” error in a Sainsbury’s in Elephant and Castle, London.
He said supermarket staff were unable to explain why he was being told to leave, and would only direct him to a QR code leading to the website of the firm Facewatch, which the retailer has hired to run facial recognition in some of its stores. He said when he contacted Facewatch, he was told to send in a picture of himself and a photograph of his passport before the firm confirmed it had no record of him on its database.
“One of the reasons I was angry was because I shouldn’t have to prove I am innocent,” Rajah said. “I shouldn’t have to prove I’m wrongly identified as a criminal.” He described the incident as feeling “quite like Minority Report, Orwellian”.
He said while doing his normal shop, he was approached by three members of the store’s staff, one of whom appeared to affirm that he was the person pictured on a device they had. It is understood the Facewatch system flagged someone else who had entered the store, and staff mistook Rajah for him.
Rajah was concerned some form of permanent record implying he had been involved in criminality might have been created on Facewatch’s system. Eventually, the firm told him he was not on its database and referred him back to Sainsbury’s.
“You felt quite helpless in the situation because you’re just thrown from pillar to post – because Sainsbury’s initially blame Facewatch, then Facewatch retort saying it’s actually Sainsbury’s,” he said. “And then, when Sainsbury’s called me on Wednesday from the executive office, they blamed the store staff. So they’re constantly shifting the blame as to who’s responsible for this.”
Rajah was upset that he felt he had had to prove his innocence – and said he had received little assurance about how the information he had to hand over to Facewatch was stored, and whether it had been deleted.
And he said that, while he was lucky enough to be able to navigate the system, “what happens to the vulnerable people who, for example, have learning disabilities or don’t know how to scan a QR code? They haven’t put any processes or procedures in place for anybody to challenge this. You should not be expected to send your personal information – that is totally unacceptable.”
Sainsbury’s said: “We have been in contact with Mr Rajah to sincerely apologise for his experience in our Elephant and Castle store. This was not an issue with the facial recognition technology in use but a case of the wrong person being approached in store.”
Facewatch said: “We’re sorry to hear about Mr Rajah’s experience and understand why it would have been upsetting. This incident arose from a case of human error in store, where a member of staff approached the wrong customer.
“Our data protection team followed the usual process to confirm his identity and verified that he was not on our database and had not been subject to any alerts generated by Facewatch.”
