Innocent shopper are being wrongly added to facial recognition blacklists.
Madeleine Stone, Senior Advocacy Officer at Big Brother Watch said: “This tech turns shoppers into walking barcodes and makes us a nation of suspects, with devastating consequences for people’s lives when it inevitably makes mistakes.”
She argues facial recognition is “even more ‘dystopian, disproportionate and chilling'” than other security measures.
“We’ve had awful stories about elderly people now being afraid of shopping alone, absolutely terrified of being publicly accused of being a shoplifter. If you’re a vulnerable person, if you’re elderly, if you have mental health issues, if you don’t speak English very well – it can really affect your life and willingness to go out in public.”
Big Brother Watch has already heard from at least 40 people misidentified by facial recognition or mistakenly added to Facewatch’s watchlist.
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