00:20Matt Arnold walked into a Sainsbury's in East Dulwich to do his regular weekly shot.
00:25As he was scanning the food, he was stopped by management, who told him he could not be served due
00:30to an incident earlier in the week.
00:32He told BBC London that he'd been wrongly identified as a shoplifter by the supermarket's AI facial recognition software before
00:40being escorted off the premises.
00:42The man had scanned his Nectar card, which contains his dress, and all the products that he was hoping to
00:48purchase before he was accosted.
00:50And how that has come to be is a real question for Sainsbury's and the fact that they're continuing to
00:56expand from 50 to 200 stores before Christmas
00:59with a technology that has this potential to make you not just a suspect,
01:04but actually the victim of an accusation of being a criminal in front of your friends, your family, your colleagues.
01:10He later received an apology from Sainsbury's, who blamed the incident on human error,
01:15though the Dulwich store have suspended their use of the technology.
01:18Similar facial recognition software is now being rolled out at selected TFL stations,
01:23and Civil Liberties charity Big Brother Watch warns us that what happened to Matt could happen more frequently.
01:30Sadly, the risk of misidentifications just goes up directly with the number of cameras with this technology.
01:36The Americans are ahead of us on this.
01:39They've been using the technology for longer,
01:41and they've already had several instances of people spending time in prison for crimes they didn't commit
01:47because facial recognition technology wrongly identified them as a suspect.
01:52The truth is this technology is far from perfect.
01:55It can make mistakes, and we have seen historically that all too often authorities are willing to take the word
02:02of the computer over common sense.
02:05I can't help but think of all the postmasters who were saying for years,
02:09the technology has got this wrong, but in practice they weren't believed.
02:14Jack tells us they're calling for more oversight in how it's being used and implemented.
02:19Everyone can agree that the police should be solving more crimes,
02:22and no one is in favour of the state of shoplifting we've seen in shops.
02:25But whether or not police resources should be better spent on, say, more police officers,
02:30and whether or not Sainsbury's resources should be spent on creating shopping environments
02:35that are harder to steal from instead of turning us all into suspects, I think needs to be addressed.
02:41I think we should also, again, think hard about the tools we create today being in different people's hands tomorrow.
02:48The ICO today released its audit findings and found inconsistencies
02:52in the way that the police are using and overseeing their own technology.
02:56Things can go wrong with this technology, and also it might end up in the hands of people
03:01who want to use it for more nefarious purposes.
03:03There is a real danger that this technology becomes normalised,
03:07and threats we've not even thought about come out of the woodwork.
03:10TFL and the British Transport Police say the technology used only seeks to generate alerts
03:14for individuals on an authorised watch list linked to serious and high-harm offences,
03:19including robbery, knife crime and sexual assaults.
03:22Our data shows that the technology is highly accurate and fair,
03:26and we've already made more than 2,100 arrests using it.
03:30Last year alone, more than 3 million faces walked past the cameras,
03:34resulting in only 12 false alerts, none of which led to an arrest.
03:39Crucially, every alert is reviewed by trained officers before any action is taken.
03:44While faces are scanned in real time, images of people who are not a match are not retained,
03:49so anyone not on the watch list will have their image immediately deleted as they continue their journey.
03:54There is a big difference between facial recognition technology and standard CCTV.
03:59The invasiveness of the scanning, which treats your face very much like a fingerprint or an ID,
04:04means that you are subject to something that is materially different
04:08and could have much more profound consequences than the ability to record what's going on in a busy London street.
04:15I would also add that the public are firmly on our side.
04:18Around 80% of Londoners support the use of live facial recognition to keep them safe.
04:22Yet a small number of campaign groups continue to argue that the police should be prevented from using such proven
04:28tools
04:29that help us catch paedophiles, rapists, violent criminals and those wanted by the courts.
04:34Meanwhile, during a pilot trial in Croydon earlier this year,
04:37the Met made an arrest every 35 minutes thanks to the technology.
04:42I admit he's not fighting the war, but it's only once I've done it.
04:44He's doing it on the face.
04:44We said that might be the one time, but it's the one time...
04:47The county's stuck on the camera.
04:48To be honest with me, what is your relation to this little girl?
04:51It's just the mum's free.
04:53It's the girl that I know in the pub.
04:54It's 262-7.
04:55You have no relation to this?
04:56No!
04:57None whatsoever.
04:58What's the breach?
04:59He's not allowed to be in company.
05:00262-7.
05:01I'm going to be arrested because you've breached your sexual...
05:03So we can actually be in a fight late, so you've been arrested
05:06because you're shown once on a pre-national computer,
05:09or you've heard in a GBH,
05:11and then you should all be harmed when you've assaulted someone.
05:14Oh, there he is.
05:15Caught right now.
05:17Hang on.
05:18Hang on, chat with you, mate.
05:22Come on, mate.
05:27They were running a life-changing operation, yeah?
05:29You were identified as a person that was wanted.
05:31Yeah, but you don't know the situation.
05:33You have no situation.
05:34That offense is saying it's okay.
05:35Right, pay it to a bit.
05:36So you don't know the situation.
05:41Green-coloured trousers, cream-coloured jacket,
05:43unzipped with a black T-shirt, multi-coloured motif on the front.
05:53They're also understood to be planning to use it in the West End and Soho
05:56due to high crime rates there,
05:58while Sir Sadiq Khan seemed to confirm its use on Oxford Street last month.
06:02The police have made it abundantly clear by now
06:05that they fully intend to roll this out as far as they can.
06:09The justification of rolling out in busy areas
06:11essentially amounts to roll it out where people are.
06:15The price of admission to the theatre shouldn't be your privacy.
06:18You should be able to go about your daily life in peace
06:21without expecting a camera in your face.
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