Customer is marched out of Sainsbury’s he has shopped at for ten years after staff wrongly identify him as an offender on facial recognition software
A customer was escorted out of his local Sainsbury’s store, where he had been shopping for a decade, after staff using facial recognition software mistakenly identified him as the criminal.
Warren Rajah was at the branch next to Elephant and Castle station on Tuesday when two staff members and a security guard suddenly escorted him outside.
When the 42-year-old man asked why, he pointed to a sign indicating the store was using facial recognition technology.
The store is one of six stores in London where Sainsbury’s has recently introduced Facewatch technology in response to increased theft and violence against staff.
Sainsbury’s website says initial results have been ‘encouraging’, with a 46 per cent reduction in theft, vandalism, aggression and antisocial behavior in trial stores and 92 per cent of offenders not returning.
According to the software’s website, it has a 99.98 per cent accuracy rate and is ‘the only crime prevention tool that proactively detects known criminals, allowing staff to take action before a crime is committed.’
In November, Facewatch sent 49,589 positive alerts to known criminals to protect its customers’ employees and assets.
Warren Rajah, 42, was sacked from local Sainsbury’s after staff made facial recognition mistake
Mr Rajah has been shopping at Elephant and Castle for ten years
The software’s cameras scan customers’ faces, which are compared to a database of registered criminals.
Store managers are then alerted to any matches so they can verify the match.
In Mr. Rajah’s case, the error was made in the second stage of human verification.
Mr Rajah explained his ordeal Metro: ‘They came to me and wanted to see my ‘barcode’. I didn’t know what that meant so I showed them my Nectar card.
‘Then they told me to leave. ‘Being taken out of the place where I had been shopping for 10 years, in front of my community, was the most humiliating moment of my life.’
To prove he had no criminal convictions, he submitted a person access request to Facewatch, asking them to reveal what data they held about him to trigger the alarm at Sainsbury’s.
To do this, he had to email a picture of himself and a copy of his passport; He said it felt ‘like a massive invasion of my privacy’.
He said: ‘I started to panic tremendously as I didn’t know anything about this company or what they did. Do they record crimes as they occur? Are they affiliated with law enforcement? ‘Will this affect my career?’
The Elephant and Castle store (pictured) is one of six stores in London where Sainsbury’s has recently introduced Facewatch technology in response to increased theft and violence against staff.
Facewatch confirms Mr Rajah is not in database
By law, before any information can be disclosed, Facewatch must first verify the identity of the person making the request to ensure that they are who they claim to be; hence such information needs to be requested from Mr. Rajah.
Facewatch confirmed to Mr Rajah that he was not on the database and was directed to Sainsbury’s. BBC reports.
Mr Rajah said the supermarket called him to apologize and offered him a £75 voucher.
Both the supermarket and Facewatch claimed that this was not the fault of the cameras but human error caused by staff inside the store approaching the wrong person.
A Sainsbury’s spokesman said: ‘We have contacted Mr Rajah to sincerely apologize for his experience at our Elephant and Castle store.
‘This was not an issue with the facial recognition technology used, but rather a case of approaching the wrong person in the store.’
A Facewatch spokesperson said: ‘We were sorry to hear about Mr. Rajah’s experience and understand why this might be upsetting.
‘This incident resulted from an incident of human error when a member of staff in the store approached the wrong customer.
‘Our Data Protection team followed the usual process to verify his identity and confirmed that he was not on our database and was not subject to any alerts generated by Facewatch.’
This isn’t the first time a customer has fallen victim to human error at a store using facial recognition technology.
A B&M shopper Jenny was placed on a watch list and banned from returning to her local store in Birmingham after she was falsely accused of stealing a bottle of wine earlier.
He previously told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘It’s as if we’ve made retail executives and tech companies judge, jury and executioner, with no due process whatsoever.’
The retail company apologized and blamed human error.
Other cases include a 64-year-old woman accused of stealing less than £1 worth of paracetamol from Home Bargains, who was wrongly added to a facial recognition watchlist, and Danielle Horan, from Manchester, was ordered to leave two separate stores after being falsely accused of stealing a toilet roll.
