Security· August 17, 2026 at 04:21 a.m.
Sainsbury's Temporarily Halts Facial Recognition After Mistaken Ejection of Shopper
Key takeaways
- Sainsbury's temporarily halted facial recognition
- Second incident of mistaken ejection this year
- Human error led to wrongful ejection
UK supermarket chain Sainsbury's has temporarily halted live facial recognition (LFR) at one of its stores following a second incident this year where a shopper was wrongly ejected. Matt Arnold, a comedy promoter, was removed from the East Dulwich store on August 6 after being mistaken for a suspected thief by staff responding to an LFR alert. The incident is similar to an earlier one involving Warren Rajah at Sainsbury's Elephant and Castle store. Sainsbury's maintains that the Facewatch system correctly identified someone linked to a previous theft, but human error occurred in the response. The supermarket claims that its LFR system has a 99.98 percent accuracy rate.
