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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

#181
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Put the criminals in prison. Do it often enough, and shoplifting ceases to be a problem of plague-like proportions. Big fan of accountability and immediate personal consequences and enforcing the law. This just doesn't work. A high-trust society cannot be built by force. > I am fatigued of the suicidal and deleterious empathy of those in charge who refuse to take second-order effects into account. The irony here is…

What do you mean "this just doesn't work"?

You do understand that an overwhelming majority of crime and overall anti social behavior is done by a tiny percentage of people. Remove those people and you spare the rest of us.

For instance, the number of prisoners that have had 15 or more prior arrests is over 26%.

You can just have a 15 strikes and you're out policy and make a huge impact. Once these bad actors are out of society, high trust can be built. Stop letting a tiny percentage of people terrorize the rest of us.

It's not about poverty and ironically the biggest victims of this criminal behavior are poor people. Poor innocent people deal w theft, getting hassled and other consequences of criminal behavior at a much higher rate. It's not compassionate to let them suffer.

https://mleverything.substack.com/p/acceptance-of-crime-is-a...

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

#182
post #20

I frequent the Home Despot and Lowe Life's, until recently, traditionally favoring the Home Despot. The last two visits revealed the complete elimination of checkout lines and the appearance of a new cluster of self service registers with a new orientation perpendicular to the old lines. As I stood before the register, looking at the large monitor, I watched my dehumanized face beleaguered by green lines. I realized…

Your experience, or your perception of it, clearly made you feel like you were the main character in a dystopian thriller - what's not to like?

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

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Put the criminals in prison. Do it often enough, and shoplifting ceases to be a problem of plague-like proportions. Big fan of accountability and immediate personal consequences and enforcing the law. This just doesn't work. A high-trust society cannot be built by force. > I am fatigued of the suicidal and deleterious empathy of those in charge who refuse to take second-order effects into account. The irony here is…

High trust societies can only exist when there are consequences for things like theft.

All examples of high trust societies show that those consequences must be social, because _by definition_, in a high-trust society, you must trust other people to do the right thing.

A punitive dictatorship or police state is not a high-trust society, even though laws may be strictly enforced. Likewise, in a high-trust society, behaviour is expected to be good and moral, even where not mandated by law.

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

#184
post #120
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…

[flagged]

That would require spending more tax dollars on law enforcement and courts, and almost nobody wants to do that.

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

#185

Home Depot's self-checkouts are using this facial ID to build/maintain their shoplifting database — this tracks thefts by the same person across multiple visits, and is used over time to build up a case against errant self-checkout-ers (i.e. to get them above a theft threshhold, at which point prosecution becomes easier). There is also CCTV AI (whether artificial intelligence, or actually indians) which can intervene…

I've noticed at supermarkets here that of the dozens of times those 'you haven't scanned something' warnings have come up, only one time the item hadn't actually scanned when I thought it had. Every other time has been a false positive for me. They're pretty dodgy, the workers always seem pretty frustrated with it as they go around clearing them for people (sometimes a handful of people waiting, falsely accused by th…

The worst part for me is when they prevent you from scanning the same item twice.

Yes, I want 2 boxes of cereal.

I just find it easier to go to a cashier.

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

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i.e. to get them above a theft threshhold, at which point prosecution becomes easier This feels like it should be illegal. Holding back on reporting or prosecuting until you think you're more likely to get a conviction or a bigger conviction, feels close to entrapment. To do otherwise is just unnecessarily vindictive, showing that it's the punishment that matters more than the prevention.

The issue is that in many states now prosecutors refuse to prosecute for crimes under a certain threshold, cops often won’t even bother taking a report. A year ago my wallet was stolen. The guy went on a shopping spree until my cc companies started denying charges. In each store he made sure to spend less than $500, so individually there was no crime worth reporting. I did file it as $2k+ of stolen goods but afaik th…

I doubt it has anything to do with "progressive". It has to do with limited resources and spending them where they think they will do the most good.

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

#187

I make it a point not to use self-checkout systems because I want to support human interaction even if basic, and contribute to jobs for humans. And cash (most self-checkouts here are card-only). I understand it’s a losing battle on all fronts.

Same, I refuse to use them. I'm not going to support making cashiers redundant.

On top of that I don't want to be in a position where I get accused of shoplifting when I forgot to scan something. I'm simply not trained on the 7+ different self-checkout terminals they have around here.

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

#188
post #9

I have developed an extreme distrust of self-checkout systems generally, in part because of the risk of this sort of thing. As a result, I simply don't use them at all anymore.

I exclusively use self-checkout because the lines move faster because one line feeds multiple self-checkouts vs each regular checkout having its own line. This leads to head of line blocking from very customers with a lot more items than you.

This is not an exclusive feature of self-checkout. I have shopped at many places where one line is fed into an array of human cashiers.

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

#189

I make it a point not to use self-checkout systems because I want to support human interaction even if basic, and contribute to jobs for humans. And cash (most self-checkouts here are card-only). I understand it’s a losing battle on all fronts.

This is exactly why I love to leave my carts out in front of the entrance and in the parking lot.

Without me, there'd be no cart gatherer jobs.

I once said this without stating it as a joke, but was surprised to find people enthusiastically agreeing with me. /s

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

#190
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I exclusively use self-checkout because the lines move faster because one line feeds multiple self-checkouts vs each regular checkout having its own line. This leads to head of line blocking from very customers with a lot more items than you.

This is not an exclusive feature of self-checkout. I have shopped at many places where one line is fed into an array of human cashiers.

What store? I have not seen a single store with this setup.
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