A student is suing Apple for $1 billion, after the company's in-store facial recognition software mistakenly identified him as a thief.
Ousmane Bah, an 18-year-old from New York, was arrested in November 2018, in connection with a series of thefts from Apple Stores.
The arrest warrant included a photo captured using Apple's facial recognition software, which the company uses in its stores to track people suspected of theft.
However, the photo didn't resemble Bah and, according to a lawsuit filed on Monday, he was attending his senior prom in Manhattan on the day of the theft - which took place in Boston.
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Bah said he had previously lost a learner's permit without a photograph, which may have been found or stolen by the real thief and used as identification in Apple stores.
As a result, Bah claimed, his name may have been mistakenly connected to the thief's face in Apple’s facial recognition system.
He is now demanding damages of $1 billion, claiming he was "forced to respond to multiple false allegations which led to severe stress and hardship in his life".
He is also accusing Apple of defamation, claiming the arrest has done "significant damage to his positive reputation that he had put so much effort into upholding”.
Apple has declined to comment on the case.
For many, the most worrying aspect of the story may be the revelation that Apple uses facial recognition security software within in its stores - something that is not widely known.
The lawsuit describes this as "the type of Orwellian surveillance that consumers fear, particularly as it can be assumed that the majority of consumers are not aware that their faces are secretly being analyzed".
Of course, the company's latest iPhones incorporate the technology as part of its FaceID authentication system, but this feature is voluntary.
The suit claims that the potential implications of FaceD are far-reaching, and that Apple's "normalization of this type of technology is in many ways irresponsible and dangerous".
