UK shoppers say facial recognition wrongly accused them of theft

The cost of a false match

Mary told TechRadar that her husband became socially isolated after a brief trip to Home Bargains to buy vitamins. The store’s system flagged him as a suspected shoplifter, and management asked the couple to leave. Her account suggests they were not given a way to contest the accusation.

He later told TechRadar that he was afraid to enter shops.

In another case, a man was reportedly shaking from head to toe after his wife was removed from a Budgens. She had been accused of stealing a large quantity of meat days earlier, although the couple had not been to that store for several months.

TechRadar says other people have faced confusing corporate bureaucracy and vague insinuations. Some innocent shoppers have been unable to visit local stores and have had little means to clear their names.

The remedy asks for more data

In the UK, people can submit a Subject Access Request, or SAR, to ask for their personal data. Unlike a request under the US Freedom of Information Act, a SAR is directed at private companies. It is formally available to people wrongly suspected of shoplifting, but pursuing one takes considerable effort and does not guarantee an outcome. It also requires people to hand over more personal information in an attempt to challenge the accusation.

Jack Coulson, head of advocacy at civil liberties group Big Brother Watch, told TechRadar that being trapped in bureaucracy and forced to disclose yet more personal data just to find out what one is accused of is “a Kafkaesque nightmare.”

I think the central problem in these accounts is not just whether a system makes a bad match. It is that the person flagged may have to navigate a company’s process to learn what happened, while the consequences are already affecting where they feel able to shop. The stories do not establish how often this occurs, but they do show how difficult it can be to correct a mistake once suspicion has been attached to a face.