Barred from Grocery Stores by Facial Recognition
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Re: Barred from Grocery Stores by Facial Recognition
#2Re: Barred from Grocery Stores by Facial Recognition
#3Society is going to have a hard learned lesson on how badly false positives with punishment systems destroys community trust. It doesn't take but a few unjustly punished folks exacting revenge on the systems that hurt them to quickly polarize and disrupt communities.
Re: Barred from Grocery Stores by Facial Recognition
#4hmm
on one hand: shoplifters aren’t shoplifting all the time
on the other hand: there are many alternative ways for people to get food now, and I’m fine if a prior infraction raises their costs - such as needing to go to a farmers market, or needing to use a grocery delivery app so a surrogate purchases for them
I would be against this if it meant no way to get groceries
there does need to be an appeals process or way to be removed from the list
Re: Barred from Grocery Stores by Facial Recognition
#5Mixed feelings here. First, the false positive issue. Second, the network effect, being locked out of buying anything to eat if you shoplift. Third, the potential to track my movement to local stores that use the service, even if I am a non-criminal.
On the other side, shoplifting is becoming lawless and stores are at their wits' end. What are they supposed to do to combat shoplifting? The law certainly isn't deterring shoplifting.
Re: Barred from Grocery Stores by Facial Recognition
#6Can someone link to a non paywall version? Edit https://archive.is/pYB3G
Funny, I've been to Gordon's in central London and am familiar with the team who made the security system there. Curious that it morphed into a facial recognition software tool.
Couldn't someone just put on a mask a la COVID and have a field day to defeat facial recognition?
Re: Barred from Grocery Stores by Facial Recognition
#7Society is going to have a hard learned lesson on how badly false positives with punishment systems destroys community trust. It doesn't take but a few unjustly punished folks exacting revenge on the systems that hurt them to quickly polarize and disrupt communities.
[deleted]
Re: Barred from Grocery Stores by Facial Recognition
#8If a shop catches a thief with a box he took outside the store after they chase him down, they offer him a choice, we will either prosecute you and get you jailed/fined - or you can promise never to come here again and to be sure, we will take your photo and use our scanner to detect you, and will tell all the local shops as well.
Offered that choice, few would take the police route - this may be their tenth arrest = pick the scanner and walk away
Re: Barred from Grocery Stores by Facial Recognition
#9This is conflicting, on one hand it's certainty within the right of a store to bar people who shoplift, it's really an imperative to do so. The petty crime issue the retailers here are trying to counter is a real one.
But this application it feels like falling down an increasingly slippery slope.
Sure, today, it's just "send an alert and the store can do what it wants" but how long until that transforms into a de facto ban from the premise? Scan the person on the way in and flash their picture and name up on a TV and tell them they are trespassed from the store and if they don't leave within 60 seconds the police will be called. You can even automate that!
Sure, today, it's just "share with nearby stores" but how long until the database starts to be centralized and extends across whole states, countries or even worldwide? An argument could be made that people who are farther away from home are more likely to commit petty crimes since they have less worry about repetitional damage or harming their own community, so, obviously we need to share this data nationwide or even globally!
This facewatch company is going to have an imperative to add people to it's database and obviously sell subscriptions to access their data centrally, they aren't going to have any imperative to fairly adjudicate removals or false positives.
I can easily see a system like this ending up like credit rating bureaus with a few large companies aggregating data into a score which stores can use to deny entry.
Even if you ignore data errors of any kind and ignore false positives entirely, the concept of a relatively minor indiscretion resulting in a permanent, global, ban from any store using this technology is positively dystopian. It deeply reminds me of two of the better episodes of Black Mirror, White Christmas (the end -- you know what part I mean) and Nosedive.
The fact is though, there is a legitimate need for some kind of change to solve the retail theft problem and I don't think this type of technology is going away.
I'm generally not to argue in favor of regulation, but, this seems like this technology is going to require regulation around disputes as well some kind of regulated civil penalty list (shoplift less than $100 of merchandise on your fist offence and you're banned for at most 1 month). The real problem is that we (the US) have done a terribly poor job with regular credit scores and I can not imagine us doing a better job with this.
Re: Barred from Grocery Stores by Facial Recognition
#10Mixed feelings here. First, the false positive issue. Second, the network effect, being locked out of buying anything to eat if you shoplift. Third, the potential to track my movement to local stores that use the service, even if I am a non-criminal. On the other side, shoplifting is becoming lawless and stores are at their wits' end. What are they supposed to do to combat shoplifting? The law certainly isn't deterri…
Is shoplifting actually increasing? Data trumps anecdotes.
Combatting it is easy, you need to pay someone to stand at the door and check receipts. But stores don't want to spend money on labor and instead just want to whine and claim there is nothing that can be done, we need to hire more police, etc. to make it someone else's problem.