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.
TRENDING
Stories
Videos
Your Say
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 and that the staff had approached the wrong customer.
A Sainsbury's spokesman 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 the store."
A man was ejected from a Sainsbury's store after staff mistakenly believed he had been flagged by a facial recognition system
|GETTY
In their own statement, Facewatch 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,” the company added.
The company stressed that it did "not play any part in (Mr Rajah) being approached at the store" when he contacted them initially.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
Warren Rajah described the experience as 'Orwellian' and 'traumatic'
|LINKEDIN: WARREN RAJAH
Both the retailer and Facewatch maintain that the system operates with "99.98% accuracy”, adding that it prevented an average of 1,400 thefts and acts of abuse and violence against frontline shopworkers.
Even still, 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.
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?"
Sainsbury's confirmed that management at the Elephant and Castle store would undergo additional training, per the BBC.
Our Standards: The GB News Editorial Charter
More From GB News