A London man has described feeling 'humiliated' after staff at a Sainsbury's store in Elephant and Castle wrongly identified him as a thief using facial recognition technology. Warren Rajah was shopping earlier this week when he was approached by staff and told to leave the premises.
Rajah was instructed to abandon his shopping and escorted out of the store. When he asked for an explanation, staff pointed to a sign about facial recognition technology. The system in use is Facewatch, which Sainsbury's has been trialling in select stores since September last year to combat rising retail crime.
Facewatch later stated that there were 'no incidents or alerts associated' with Rajah, suggesting the incident was due to human error. Sainsbury's apologised to Rajah, saying the wrong person was approached by security, and offered him a £75 gift voucher.
Rajah criticised the use of the technology, questioning how shoppers are informed of their rights and the procedures to follow. He also raised concerns about data security after being required to send his photograph and passport copy to Facewatch for verification.
Facewatch apologised and stated that their data protection team followed standard procedures. Sainsbury's claims the system has a 99.98% accuracy rate and that all alerts are reviewed by trained colleagues before action is taken.
