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By Tanveer Ahmed :
A British supermarket chain has announced additional staff training after a customer was mistakenly ejected from a store due to a facial recognition alert.
Warren Rajah was approached at Sainsbury’s in Elephant and Castle, London, and told to leave after the store’s Facewatch system flagged him.
Sainsbury’s told The Register that the Facewatch technology correctly identified a person on its offenders’ database, prompting store managers to review the alert. However, in this instance, the manager mistakenly confronted Rajah instead of the intended individual.
A Sainsbury’s spokesperson said: “We have apologised to Mr Rajah for his experience. This was not a fault of the facial recognition system, but a human error in-store when the wrong person was approached.”
Facewatch is currently installed in six Sainsbury’s locations in the UK, five of them in Greater London. The technology was first trialed in September 2025 in Sydenham and Bath Oldfield Park and later expanded to Dalston, Elephant and Castle, Ladbroke Grove, Camden, and Whitechapel. Sainsbury’s reports the system has a 99.98% accuracy rate and has helped reduce theft, aggression, and antisocial behavior by 46%, with 92% of flagged offenders not returning to stores using the technology. This was the first incident where a customer was misidentified after an alert.
Rajah, who works in sales at CDW, told the BBC: “Am I supposed to live in fear of being misidentified as a criminal? Imagine the mental impact on someone vulnerable after such public humiliation.” He said three store managers approached him with smartphones, checked his details, and asked him to leave, pointing to signs that facial recognition was in use.
To resolve the error, Rajah provided Facewatch with a passport and headshot to confirm he was not on the offenders’ database. A Facewatch spokesperson said: “We regret Mr Rajah’s experience. This was human error, and our data protection team verified his identity and confirmed no alert had been triggered for him.”
The technology has also been deployed by other UK retailers, including B&M, Budgens, Costcutter, Southern Co-op, Spar, and Sports Direct. Iceland trialed similar systems last year.
Digital rights group Big Brother Watch has criticised the use of live facial recognition by supermarkets, calling it “Orwellian” and “dystopian.” The organisation highlighted a previous incident at a Home Bargains store where a customer was wrongly accused of theft due to the technology.
Jake Hurfurt, head of research at Big Brother Watch, said: “Deploying biometric surveillance in everyday shopping is chilling and disproportionate. Innocent shoppers are forced to hand over personal data and endure humiliation for minor mistakes by these systems.”
The group is leading a legal challenge against the widespread use of facial recognition in the UK, arguing it violates human rights laws. Jasleen Chaggar, Legal & Policy Officer at Big Brother Watch, added: “Without robust government regulation, private companies will continue to expand invasive surveillance unchecked, leaving people vulnerable to misidentification and abuse.”
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