Ousmane Bah, an 18-year old teen student from New York, has filed a lawsuit against the tech giant Apple claiming that the company’s facial recognition software led to his false arrest for the crime he didn’t commit. The lawsuit against the company was filed on Monday morning after the teen faced a miserable time because of Apple’s facial recognition software.
According to the officials, Ousmane Bah was arrested by the NYPD officers on November 29th from his home at 4 am after he was falsely accused of a series of allegedly committed Apple store thefts in Boston, New Jersey, Delaware, and Manhattan. The arrest was made on the grounds that the Apple security took a photo of the thief and the personal information retrieved was that of the teen student Ousmane Bah.
After examining the real security footage of the Manhattan Apple store the officials found that the real culprit looked nothing like the 18-year old. A detective eventually examined the surveillance footage and confirmed that Bah had nothing in common with the person in the footage. Backed up by the surveillance footage and statement given by the detective, the district attorney in New York and Boston have already dropped the case against Bah. However, he is still being accused of pilferage in New Jersey in a pending case.
Because of the false arrest and accusation, the teen has sued Apple for $1 billion. A New York Post notes, the lawsuit argues that Apple’s “ use of facial recognition software in its stores to track individuals suspected of theft is 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 analysed.”
The latest update on the lawsuit adds response from Apple spokesperson, who says that the company does not use any such facial recognition software in its stores.