Sainsbury’s apologises after kicking innocent man out of supermarket in facial recognition mix-up
Warren Rajah, 42, told LBC he was deeply "embarrassed" and “intimidated” as he was booted out of his local Sainsbury’s.
Sainsbury’s has been forced to apologise after kicking out an innocent man wrongly identified as a shoplifter in a facial recognition mix-up.
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Warren Rajah, 42, told LBC he was left deeply "embarrassed" and felt “intimidated” as he was booted out of his local Sainsbury’s branch with no immediate explanation.
Mr Rajah, a tech worker who has lived in Elephant and Castle for 15 years, was walking round with a shopping basket at the Old Kent Road shop when he was suddenly confronted by staff.
Without telling him what he had done to deserve getting frog-marched out, staff informed him he had been flagged by their facial recognition system.
In reality, it was another shopper flagged down by the technology, which is being trialed in multiple Sainsbury’s stores in a shoplifting crackdown.
Mr Rajah told LBC: “They had the security on my left hand side, and two managers on my right hand side so I was surrounded in the aisle.
Read more: Home Secretary defends controversial police facial recognition as thousands already arrested
“It was very intimidating and obviously embarrassing. Then when you're being escorted out the store by one of the managers… I live here, so [I had] everybody looking at me thinking what the hell's going on?”
While Sainsbury’s has issued an apology, Mr Rajah has called on the Sainsbury’s Old Kent Road store manager responsible for the blunder to say sorry personally.
Instead of admitting their mistake, staff pointed him to facial recognition firm Facewatch - which is responsible for the technology being used at various Sainsbury's branches.
“You have store managers acting like the police who then tell you you have to email a third party company.
“And I've never heard of this thing before. I don't know what that is.”
Jasleen Chaggar, Legal and Polic Officer at campaign group Big Brother Watch, said this kind of back-and-forth is not uncommon when it comes to facial recognition.
She told LBC: “If you are stopped and thrown out of the store, all that happens is that the security guards will point you to the sign at the front and most of the time people aren't aware that this is even in use.
”And then they'll say that you are left to your own devices to fight this. These are essentially criminal accusations being made against you even though you're not given any evidence, you're not even told what the accusation is.
“It's very difficult for us to have an idea about how accurate the technology is because this is essentially tech that's performing a public sector function - privatised policing - but it's doing the retail sector so it's not subject to any scrutiny.”
Ms Chaggar described the use of this “incredibly intrusive technology” as “chilling”.
She explained: “What the retailer is essentially doing is taking a biometric scan of every single person who walks in the store. And that's information that is sensitive to someone's DNA or fingerprint just in order for them to access the store.
“Everyone wants to tackle shoplifting, but to have this kind of level of biometric identity checks just for every day activities for the entirety of the population and treating every shopper as a suspect by default is not proportionate at all.
“It creates a chilling effect where you can't even go down your high street or go to the shops without fear that you're going to be identified.”
Sainsbury’s began trialing facial recognition technology in two of its stores - Sydenham and Bath Oldfield Park. It has since extended the trial to a further five London stores - Dalston, Elephant and Castle, Ladbroke Grove, Camden and Whitechapel.
However, it is not the only retailer to trial the technology - with the same system rolled out in stores from Budgens and Spar to Sports Direct and Co-op.
It comes amid reports of 2,000 incidents of violence and abuse across UK retailers every day, according to the British Retail Consortium.
A Sainsbury’s spokesperson 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."
A Facewatch spokesperson 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.