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‘My mum is “scared to go shopping alone” after facial recognition wrongly branded her a shoplifter’
As covered in The Guardian, a 64-year-old woman has launched a legal complaint against Home Bargains and facial recognition company Facewatch after she was wrongly accused of stealing less than £1’s worth of paracetamol and blacklisted from shops in her area. Privacy rights campaigners Big Brother Watch, who are supporting the woman, have warned of the “devastating consequences” of facial recognition technology.
Big Brother Watch has warned that the technology is having a “profound and damaging impact […] on the the public’s rights” and that Anna is one of many people “caught up in a confusing net of privatised surveillance” as a result of retailers’ use of live facial recognition. Home Bargains as well as a number of other shops including Southern Co-op supermarkets, Flannels, and Sports Direct have installed live facial recognition cameras in stores across the country. “Home Bargains and Facewatch are adding customers to secret watchlists with no due process, meaning innocent people like Anna* are being falsely accused, grossly mistreated and blacklisted from shops.
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