April  24, 2019

Anna Wood

An 18-year-old teenager sued Apple company for $1 billion for the facial recognition software improperly connected him with a series of thieves in Apple stores.

Ousmane Bah, African American, a college student from New York, filed a sue to accuse Apple and the security frim Security Industry Specialists Inc. on April 22.

He was arrested at his home by New York Police Department officers on November 29. According to his lawsuit, he had been identified as a thief in a series of thieves in Boston, New Jersey and Delaware.
 

Bah received the summon from a court in Boston when he was still a high school student. The summon accused him of stealing an Apple Pencils from Apple store in Boston on May 31, 2018. The actual thief might use Bah’s lost learners’ permit to access his personal information to make a purchase, excluding his photo. According to the lawsuit, one of NYPD officers decided to believe that Bah was innocent and found out that Bah was not showing up in the surveillance of Apple store. Then, the officers informed him that the facial recognition might be the reason to cause this series of wrongful accusations. Bah stated that he had been through a tough time, feeling sad and extremely stressed for all these inaccurate allegations. 

Apple’s facial recognition software is the type of Orwellian surveillance that caused the concern of consumers. Consumers are not aware that their faces have been secretly analyzed, the lawsuit stated. According to the lawsuit, all allegations has been dismissed, excluding New Jersey. Apple store did not make any comments about the legal part, but they stated they did not use facial recognition software in the store on April 28. 

Photo:Webshot .