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Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

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Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#72
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the store is going to be tracking this information, it could just as easily show a message to the offender. "Hey, we're on to you. Knock it off, or else." Going straight for the jugular is just rude.

[flagged]

Stealing from Home Depot doesn’t make you a “sociopathic criminal”. It’s shoplifting, not murder. Besides, people who are stealing building supplies are probably doing it because they’re hard up for money and trying to make more on whatever jobs they have. They’re not stealing some random superfluous consumer goods, they’re just broke and trying to make a little more money.

It’s really not that hard to understand - unless you exist solely in the white collar Silicon Valley bubble and have never known a struggle in your life. The fact that you think they “deserve no sympathy” is straight up creepy. Who are you, Marie Antoinette? Who is the real sociopath here?

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#73
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the store is going to be tracking this information, it could just as easily show a message to the offender. "Hey, we're on to you. Knock it off, or else." Going straight for the jugular is just rude.

[flagged]

So are we talking about minimizing theft or maximizing justifiable human suffering?

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#74
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not sure we should allow such premeditated charge stacking, it is just further weaponizing the law and fueling our prison industrial complex for zero gain to society. Who is to say many of those people wouldn't have stopped after being caught and charged the first time? Imagine if cops sat on the side of the road not pulling people over, just recording minor traffic offenses in a file, and then a year or so later…

Seems like proper punishment is only way to get deterrent effect. Or the courts to do their job. So to me this sounds like workable way, stack up the habitual offenders and send them to jail for a few months to few years setting them on straight path.

Do you have ANY evidence that sending someone to jail for a few months to a few years sets people on a straight path?

I am pretty sure the evidence shows the opposite.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#75
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

So are we talking about minimizing theft or maximizing justifiable human suffering?

Clearly the system people have voted in has failed to minimize theft as it is left unprosecuted too often. Thus rational and moral actors have to work inside system people voted for. And that is to reach state where crimes are properly prosecuted.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#76
I'm pretty sick of misguided/enthusiastic Loss Prevention people, and these digital systems amplify their hijinks.

The most conspicuous one recently was at one upscale grocery chain within the last year. There was what I took to be a dedicated LP person who seemed to be lurking behind the self-checkouts, to watch me specifically, and I stood there until he went away. Then, as I was checking out, this employee came up behind me and very persistently told me that I hadn't scanned something. Annoyed, I pointed on the screen where it showed I had. His eyes went wide, and he spun around, and quickly hurried away, no apology.

If I had to guess, I'd say they didn't code that intervention/confrontation as their mess-up, and I wouldn't be surprised if I still got dinged as suspicious, to cover their butts.

We do seem to have a lot of shoplifting here in recent years. And I have even recently seen a street person in a chain pharmacy here, simply tossing boxes of product off the shelves, into a dingy black trash bag, in the middle of the day. Somehow none of the usual employees around. Yet there's often employees moving to stand behind me at that same store, when I use their self-checkout. (Maybe my N95 mask is triggering some association with masked bandits, yet bearded street person with big trash bag full of product makes them think of lovable Santa? But an N95 is a good idea in a pharmacy on a college campus, where the Covid factories that are college students will go when they have symptoms.)

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#77
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like proper punishment is only way to get deterrent effect. Or the courts to do their job. So to me this sounds like workable way, stack up the habitual offenders and send them to jail for a few months to few years setting them on straight path.

Do you have ANY evidence that sending someone to jail for a few months to a few years sets people on a straight path? I am pretty sure the evidence shows the opposite.

It's shocking at times to see such these ideas parroted in a community that prides itself on critical thinking. Punishment isn't rehabilitation!

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#78
post #76

I'm pretty sick of misguided/enthusiastic Loss Prevention people, and these digital systems amplify their hijinks. The most conspicuous one recently was at one upscale grocery chain within the last year. There was what I took to be a dedicated LP person who seemed to be lurking behind the self-checkouts, to watch me specifically, and I stood there until he went away. Then, as I was checking out, this employee came up…

Less relevant, but reminds me of my all-time favorite grocery store LP encounter, near MIT. The chain was running this big promotion with lots of tear-open prize tickets that are either coupons or game board pieces, so I had been visiting often, to buy ramen noodles (one ticket per package!) and I had a small stack of coupons in my wallet. I was checking my coupons for this visit in the middle of a center aisle, and was returning my wallet to my back pocket, when this nice middle-aged probably church-going woman store employee walked up, looked at me, and the "oh!" expression on her face said she was very surprised that I was stealing. She hurried off. When I get to the checkout, this middle-aged guy acting a bit like a drunk comes behind me and boxes me in, by sprawling across both the lane and the conveyor. The young checkout woman says to him, annoyed, "Not you again." The guy strikes up a conversation with me. "That's a nice backpack. ... If I had a backpack like that, people would think I was stealing something." It was an ordinary cheap bare-bones store-branded backpack. He's getting close to illegally detaining me, which would go extremely badly for him. To de-escalate, I do my best folksy code-switching, and pretend not to know what's going on. My hyperobservant mode also kicked in: there was abnormal maneuvers of multiple people from the other side of the checkouts. One young guy coming up with the others, my eyes dark to him, he sees I see him, and for some reason gets a look like he's noping the f right out of whatever is going down, and he spins 180 and quickly walks away. Eventually, this friendly and sensible person, who I took to be the manager on duty, comes up on the other side of the checkout, and we have a friendly conversation about the ticket promotion. I think she immediately realized that I was a good-natured MIT type, not a shoplifter. And I would guess she thought the LP guy was a clown who risks getting the store sued someday.

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#79
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are we talking about minimizing theft or maximizing justifiable human suffering?

Clearly the system people have voted in has failed to minimize theft as it is left unprosecuted too often. Thus rational and moral actors have to work inside system people voted for. And that is to reach state where crimes are properly prosecuted.

It has failed to eliminate it, is what you mean. Do you want to minimize theft at the expense of any other concern?

Re: Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

#80
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im not sure we should allow such premeditated charge stacking, it is just further weaponizing the law and fueling our prison industrial complex for zero gain to society. Who is to say many of those people wouldn't have stopped after being caught and charged the first time? Imagine if cops sat on the side of the road not pulling people over, just recording minor traffic offenses in a file, and then a year or so later…

Seems like proper punishment is only way to get deterrent effect. Or the courts to do their job. So to me this sounds like workable way, stack up the habitual offenders and send them to jail for a few months to few years setting them on straight path.

Rehabilitation and support is not what "people" want. Political parties that want more punishment seldom want to spend money even on punishments. So it becomes impossible to put people on a straight path. Having courts do their job is very expensive as well so instead people build their careers on getting fast convictions of people. The thing that helps is consistently building a society that cares, you have to know that the society will certainly react to your actions.

Having a hidden social credit system hidden and managed by a private actor seems like the worst way of doing it.

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