Live data from Hacker News

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

petapixel.com

241–250 of 627 posts

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

#241

I am of the firm opinion that if big corps want to outsource their labor to me, the customer, then it is my right to treat myself to a few free items here and there as compensation for the work being done. If you don't want that to happen, give cashiers their jobs back, you greedy bastards.

your compensation is speed, you get to go home faster. Is that not enough?

I have never experienced a faster checkout with self checkout.

If it's super fast, it's just for a few items, and a cashier would've been just as fast. If it's for a lot of items, there's a decent chance I have to look up some codes or something; which a cashier is better and faster at.

The trade off of self checkout is cost savings for the business. These savings are not passed on to me. Therefore, I don't give a flying rat's ass about them.

I'm with OP. If I'm working for the business, they will compensate me. Willingly or unwillingly.

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

#242

Don't people dodge these cameras? When I used a credit card at home depot self checkout I was asked if I wanted to have the receipt sent to a specific email address I entered previously online. Creepy. So I started using cash only. Last year I went to get some low voltage wire. I walked for several aisles in both directions to find someone to open the cage. Not a soul. So I reached behind the cage and pulled it out,…

> When I used a credit card at home depot self checkout I was asked if I wanted to have the receipt sent to a specific email address I entered previously online. Creepy. So I started using cash only.

A lot of retailers do that now. They match first 6/last 4 in store against your online account to match receipts up. Walmart is a big one now with that implemented across their self-checkouts (and eventually pushed onto the registers with their new software/hardware upgrade push).

> The machine said it couldn't issue change and to see an associate. Seemed odd as it was early in the day.

Slightly makes sense if they haven’t loaded every machine up with a full cash load. Plus some lanes might “accidentally” be turned on without any cash in them and not put into a “cards only” state.

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

#243

Maybe the plaintiff is fishing, but this is the reason I never abandoned my Covid mask after the pandemic. You want to string up cameras like Christmas lights? I can wear a mask! What ticks me off more is WalMart and some grocery stores putting monitors over certain aisles, to show you're being monitored. I'll sometimes flip them off. Aldi really annoyed me by showing live video on the self checkout screen with the n…

They've still got your gait analysis.

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

#244

Maybe the plaintiff is fishing, but this is the reason I never abandoned my Covid mask after the pandemic. You want to string up cameras like Christmas lights? I can wear a mask! What ticks me off more is WalMart and some grocery stores putting monitors over certain aisles, to show you're being monitored. I'll sometimes flip them off. Aldi really annoyed me by showing live video on the self checkout screen with the n…

They've still got your gait analysis.

Wear different size shoes and put them on the wrong foot. Your brain will be struggling to have a consistent gait

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

#245
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HD has really good self checkouts though. They don't require any interaction with the touch screen except hitting "Done", nor do they have over-sensitive anti-theft scale systems. It's just a wireless barcode scanner on a table with a receipt printer and a payment terminal. The screen shows everything you've scanned with pictures! and legible product descriptions, which makes it really easy to make sure you scanned e…

When they were first rolled out you had to weigh everything or get a person to come over _per item_ ... It was total Insanity.

That was the old NCR Fastlane implementation, done wrong. They left the item security feature enabled and left the bag scales turned on. This also happened at IKEA US (which lead to them being pulled out for a long while).

A lot of retailers have dumped NCR and gone in-house for their self checkout software packages now and made it so much better. Home Depot took their custom point-of-sale and built their own self checkout frontend on top of it to allow all checkout lanes to “convert” to self checkout.

Target also did the same, dumping NCR’s software and rolling in-house software on top of the hardware to make it Not Suck.

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

#246
post #11
post #2

What's the purpose of the green square, anyways? Why not just have a regular camera feed?

Increase deterrence effect to scare away shoplifters. Home depot goes out of the way to make its cameras visible. There is a large "camera" sign, bright light to catch your attention, a visible display to show it's not a fake, and sometimes even a motion activated chime. I assume the green square around the face is the next step in a game.

Around here they have been deploying parking lot camera systems with a blinking blue light. Some sources have suggested these sorts of "made you look" attention grabbers are being deployed near cameras in order to get people to reflexively look at the camera, giving the system a better shot at capturing face biometrics.

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

#247

My understanding of these systems is that the green box just detects a face to a) make it easier to scan hours of footage later looking for faces b) add a subtle intimidation factor against crime. Is a picture of a face count as "biometric" information? I strongly doubt it and suspect this case will be thrown out.

It’s “face detection blocking” built into the camera/display. Otherwise, the video footage is just straight sent as ONVIF to the main DVR for whatever processing is done there (which could be a lot more nefarious).

Wren Solutions / Costar seem to be the main vendors of these “public view monitors” — such as the PVM10-B-2086.

https://6473609.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6473609...

“Face Detection Boxes (Neon Green, Front and Side Detection)”

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shoplifters don’t care. Look at any hardware section at homedepot. Half the bags are ripped open. Try and find some stock they say is there online. Its not it already got stolen. The registers is not where they need to be combatting theft. It is everywhere else in that store.

As someone living in Japan, the sheer number of instances of theft in your description shocks me. Is this that common there?

Depends on where you are at. Shrinkage runs around 1.6% on average in the US, but it can vary quite a bit by location. If you are in a rich quiet suburb, you will probably not see it. If you are in a rough neighborhood, or a very dense urban area, you probably will.

I have lived in neighborhoods where theft is unheard of, and I have lived in neighborhoods where I checked to make sure each item hadn't been opened before putting them in my cart.

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

#249
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've still got your gait analysis.

Wear different size shoes and put them on the wrong foot. Your brain will be struggling to have a consistent gait

be sure to buy such shoes with cash or the Amazon cart ( or CC data ) will lead back to you.

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

#250
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You do understand that an overwhelming majority of crime and overall anti social behavior is done by a tiny percentage of people. Are you including all the bosses committing wage theft in this? Or are we only looking at a particular kind of crime?

Yes
Post reply on HN