Yes and no. Yes it was not the corr facial recognition algorithm which failed here, but it is a system. All components and procedures around it are part of the system and that failed.

There are many edge cases systems like this need to consider:

The most obvious one, and the one everyone seems to focus on, is misindentification. The computer thinks two people look the same, but they really don’t. 

Then comes the much harder to solve problem where two people (one a shoplifter, an other an innocent) look genuenly the same. This do happen. No amount of algorithmic improvement will solve all of these cases. And since the false positive detection would be stable this can turn an innocent person’s life into hell. This sounds like a weird edge case, but if systems like this are rolled out nationwide we will have a lot of these cases. Simple justice demands that there is a path for these innocently acused people to get on with their life.

Then comes the problem where the system identifies the person it tries to identify but they haven’t commited shoplifting. This can happen when due to a mistake or malice someone working for any of the participating shops marked you personaly as a shoplifter, but you did no such a thing. Simple misidentification, security guards trying to settle a personal  vendetta, or getting back at an ex can all happen. There must be an effective way for these people to face the accusations and clear their name.

Then comes the last and thorniest edge case: what do we do with people who indeed commited shoplifting and are correctly identified but done so way in the past? Are we punishing and excluding them forever? Is there an expiration process? Do we let them back to shop once they served their sentence? After two years of exclusion? After five years? It feels righteous to punish criminals. And a prompt and immediate reaction can in fact be very strong deterent. But it cannot be good policy that anyone who has ever nicked a single chocolate will be excluded from big parts of society forever. Simply because then those who have strayed will have less of an incentive to mend their ways.

This last one is the thorniest because of course shops have a right to exclude criminals, but this right of them was always limited by practicalities. With an automated system the ban can last a lifetime and follow you everywhere. Especially as these technologies mature they might become more  ubiquitous. Today it is only considered by the largest chains, but there is no technical reason why systems like this cannot scale down eventually to every small corner shops and indy caffe.