A man was wrongly ejected from his local Sainsbury’s supermarket after staff mistakenly believed he had been flagged by the store’s facial recognition system.
The supermarket chain has since apologised for what it described as “human error” and offered Warren Rajah, a data professional, compensation in the form of a £75 voucher.
Mr Rajah described the experience as “Orwellian” and “traumatic,” recalling how he was forced to abandon his shopping and leave the premises while other customers watched at the brand in London’s Elephant and Castle.
The incident began when three members of staff, including a security guard, suddenly approached the innocent shopper and asked whether he was a regular at the store.
One employee repeatedly glanced between Mr Rajah and a mobile phone before nodding to her colleagues, at which point he was instructed to leave immediately.
When he requested an explanation, the staff simply pointed him towards a notice in the shop window about facial recognition technology and told him to get in touch with Facewatch directly.
After contacting the surveillance company, Mr Rajah learned he was not listed on their database whatsoever.
To clear his name, the data worker was required to submit his passport and a photograph to Facewatch, which he found deeply troubling, given he was the wronged party.
A man was ejected from a Sainsbury’s store after staff mistakenly believed he had been flagged by a facial recognition system
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GETTY
The shop is among six locations in the capital where Sainsbury’s has recently introduced Facewatch technology to combat rising theft and aggression towards workers.
Mr Rajah expressed serious doubts about whether Sainsbury’s employees had received adequate training to operate alongside the Facewatch system, which depends on human interpretation of alerts.
“Am I supposed to walk around fearful that I might be misidentified as a criminal?” he told the BBC.
Mr Rajah was particularly troubled by the potential impact on vulnerable shoppers, questioning how “mentally debilitating” such public humiliation could be for someone in a fragile state.
Warren Rajah described the experience as ‘Orwellian’ and ‘traumatic’
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LINKEDIN: WARREN RAJAH
He also criticised the lack of any “proper recourse to challenge” the staff’s decision at the time, asking: “What would happen if I asked the police to be called? What rights do I have?”
Facewatch confirmed its system “did not play any part in (Mr Rajah) being approached at the store”, redirecting him back to Sainsbury’s for answers about the mistaken identification.
A Sainsbury’s spokesman stated: “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.”
Both the retailer and Facewatch maintain that the system operates with “99.98% accuracy”.
Jasleen Chaggar, legal and policy officer at Big Brother Watch, said her organisation “regularly hears from members of the public who are left traumatised after being wrongly caught in this net of privatised biometric surveillance”.
The Information Commissioner’s Office advised that retailers must carefully weigh misidentification risks and establish robust procedures to ensure accuracy when collecting and processing personal data.
Sainsbury’s confirmed that management at the Elephant and Castle store would undergo additional training, per the BBC.