*A teen in New York has filed a lawsuit against Apple for $1 billion, claiming the company’s facial recognition software falsely linked him to a slew of store thefts.
Ousmane Bah, 18, claims he received a summons from a court in Boston saying he stole $1,200 worth of Apple products in 2018, including Apple Pencils, which retail for $99 each, USA Today reports.
Bah was attending his senior prom on the day of one of the thefts, the report states. His suit claims he was falsely accused of robbing Apple stores in Delaware, New Jersey and Manhattan.
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Techopedia describes Facial Recognition technology as “a biometric software application capable of uniquely identifying or verifying a person by comparing and analyzing patterns based on the person’s facial contours. Facial recognition is mostly used for security purposes, though there is increasing interest in other areas of use. In fact, facial recognition technology has received significant attention as it has potential for a wide range of application related to law enforcement as well as other enterprises.”
Bah suspects the real culprit used his lost ID and pretended to be him after they got caught stealing from Apple. He believes the tech giant then programmed its security systems to recognize the perpetrator’s face as his own.
In his suit, the 18-year-old says his life has been “deeply and negatively affected” by this case of mistaken identity.
“He advanced through his freshman year of college experiencing constant anxiety and fear that at any moment he would be arrested again for a crime he did not commit.”
The complaint said Bah was “forced to respond to multiple false allegations,” which lead to “severe stress and hardship.”
Meanwhile, Apple said on Tuesday it doesn’t use facial recognition in its stores, Yahoo reports.
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