18-Year-Old Sues Apple for $1 Billion
An 18-year-old New Yorker has filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Apple, claiming the company’s facial-recognition software mistook him for a thief.
According paperwork filed by Ousmane Bah in Manhattan Federal Court, a thief stole his ID last year and then passed himself off as Bah when he was caught stealing $1,200 from a Boston Apple store. Since the ID did not include a picture, Bah’s lawsuit accuses Apple of taking the thief on his word and inputting Bah’s information, along with the thief’s photo, into its national security system.
The thief then went on to steal merchandise from Apple stores in New Jersey, Delaware and Manhattan — and Bah was blamed for committing the crimes. Bah was even arrested in November, but the NYPD let him go after realizing the guy in a surveillance video looked nothing like him, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit goes on to call 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.”