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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

#371

Post by cryptonector »

AngryData wrote: post #51
ProllyInfamous wrote: post #40

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…

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…

Blame jurisdictions that made shoplifting up to $900 or similarly large amounts practically not-a-crime.

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

#372

Post by immibis »

itake wrote: post #162
AidenVennis wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if this is the same for the USA, but worker shortage is the main reason why self-checkout became popular here in Europe at least. Aging population, very low birthrate and higher educated people all contributed to this problem (although not for all countries in the EU).

In the USA, the self checkout line is easily 5x faster than the human line. Cities are growing, but the size or number of grocery stores is not.

In Germany, the entire self-checkout section moves as fast as one human cashier (they're very skilled, this is no joke). And they have one human supervising it at all times. And it takes the space of two human cashier lines, so they double up one of the other lanes. At the end nothing is really gained except a little bit of privacy (but not really because the supervisor's terminal still shows everything you scan)

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

#373

Post by cryptonector »

novok wrote: post #82
AngryData wrote: post #51

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…

Or if your dealing with forgetful / tech confused old people. Now your putting 75 year olds in jail when a sooner alerting system would've made them notice if they were not using it correctly.

If we weren't making shoplifting not a crime, then we wouldn't be having that worry right now.

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

#374

Post by ryandrake »

dahcryn wrote: post #228
mattlondon wrote: post #210

The people at the checkouts are typically not the ones stealing things. There is a bit of a spate here in the UK where just walk in, literally empty shelves into bags and walk out. Some security guards or assistants try to intervene, but apparently some security guards (e.g. ones at apple stores) are told not to try and intervene so really what's the point? The plot twist for this though is that the police are increa…

you'd be surprised how many people steal small valuable items and hide it by doing normal shopping and having a normal shopping cart for their other items. That expensive 30 dollar bottle of shampoo for example, in the handbag, and just checkout the other items like normal. I worked at a place where we could easily track people through the store. Not ID them, but if at any point we clicked on a person, and we could s…

So, we're talking a 30 dollar bottle of shampoo vs. people walking in, dumping the whole shelf into a trash bag and walking out. And yet we're putting all this technology, surveillance and loss prevention staff in place to catch the shampoo guy rather than trash bag man.

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

#375

Post by bluefirebrand »

bevhill wrote: post #329
freddie_mercury wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really any different than the thief who steals things just under the felony limit...but does it every day? In Texas the felony limit is $2,500. Is stealing $1000 on Monday, $1000 on Tuesday, and $1000 on Wednesday really so much better than stealing $3,000 on Monday?

The delay gives you time to arrange a refund from Visa/Mastercard or to make an insurance claim, if you're a business. You don't really have to lose anything from theft. It's just a business expense for your insurance or card issuer.

It's pretty sad that it's so normalized in our society that it's just a business expense

It shouldn't be. It's a crime

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

#376

Post by claw-el »

neilv wrote: 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…

Any LP system will have false positive and false negative. If we can have a perfect LP system without false signals, I think self-checkout systems would have been more wide spread by now.

I was accused of not paying for certain items at a grocery store recently, and I explained that I bought those at another store. The LP person didn’t even ask to check the receipt from the other store. I proceeded with packing my groceries and went home.

I wonder if we can recognize that store people would want to reconfirm if we have correctly paid for the things we thought we bought, and we just answer them. No need to assume ill intent.

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

#377

Post by neilv »

cooper_ganglia wrote: post #298
neilv wrote: 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…

>an N95 is a good idea in a pharmacy on a college campus, where the Covid factories that are college students will go Did I just step into a time portal to 2022? Have you... been in a coma for the past several years? haha

In a town of big-name universities, where people are constantly coming and going from all around the world, and the reality of students living and socializing heavily, in cramped conditions, often with little sleep... Covid still seems to be "in the air".

Most people no longer wear masks in stores here, but there are some. And some employees do as well. Including the person at/near the customer service desk of the grocery I mentioned, I think the last 2 times I was in there.

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

#378

Post by masfuerte »

fumeux_fume wrote: post #330
culturestate wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the places around here that had first-gen units with a scale on the packing side (to make sure you actually scanned eg a banana and not a two pound block of cheese, yet were constantly wrong) have replaced them with newer versions that don't have scales or any other way that I can see to validate that what you scanned is what you put into your bag. I'm not sure where I would find the data to back this up, but…

The horrible scale system of self-checkouts brought my anxiety to a fever pitch. Any slight adjustment to the bag or moving anything around would literally set off an alarm for "assistance." Still gives me low-key ptsd even though I know they don't use them anymore.

We still have them in the UK. As you say, any attempt to adjust your packing sets the alarm off so I find it's quickest to place everything directly onto the scales and only pack once I've paid.

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

#379

Post by wizzwizz4 »

ebiester wrote: post #354
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

COVID is down from its peak, as I understand. It's just very much not gone, and by no means less nasty. We had the opportunity to wipe it out with a short, synchronised global lockdown, and we squandered it, and now it's like plague.

We never had that chance because you cannot coordinate 8 million people, much less 8 billion. And nobody was going to shut down all the coordination points of society such as grocery stores, pharmacies, and hospitals. The CDC knew this at the time. The "flatten the curve" message was "slow things down enough until we know more and can avoid our hospitals from being overwhelmed and more people dying."

Australia managed to keep COVID out for nearly two years, before they ran out of resources. Stop all non-local travel, identify where it's spread to, establish a buffer zone, wait to see if we drew our buffer zone large enough… two weeks later, and most of the world can be business as usual (minus globe-hopping); two months later, and COVID-19 is as dead as smallpox… assuming everything went right. Realistically, it might take four or five months for everyone infected to recover (or die): but it's a lot easier to enforce a quarantine when there are a hundred cases in the whole world.

This would be expensive, but as expensive as what we did was? Surely not! So, other regions providing funding and resources to the regions taking on the burden would be a strictly rational move.

You might say "oh, but people didn't know about the spread!"… but that's a ridiculous claim. The Less Wrong crowd tracked it in near-real-time from open source intelligence, and governments had access to more intelligence than that. The number of governments giving nonsensical advice, like "masks don't work because the respiratory disease is not spread via aerosols", and "replace your soap with dilute alcohol", lampshades a broad coordination problem. (We're not much past the "sweet-smelling herbs will protect from the plague" advice of yore, it seems.)

The things we needed to do were done – but for ridiculous political reasons, nearly everyone waited until after the disease had reached their regions to close their borders: internationally and intranationally, at every level! (The algorithm in Pandemic II's easy mode was more sensible than that.) So much of that effort, that psychological torment, was wasted. Even if the whole world had taken Australia's approach, we still would've brought the disease to manageable levels within a year. But there wasn't the political will… and so it goes. I think we're less prepared for the next novel disease outbreak, now.

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

#380

Post by mlyle »

conductr wrote: post #137
mlyle wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Detecting a face is not the same as recognizing a face in either engineering parlance or typical usage. If I don't determine this is a face that I've seen before, I've not recognized the face (maybe I have recognized that there is a face there ). To recognize entails re-cognizing: knowing again what was previously known. Simply noticing that something is a face does not satisfy that; it is only detecting. Without lin…

Is this coming from legal definitions? Because, one of the valid dictionary definitions of "recognition" is simply acknowledging something exists. No prior knowledge needed for that, other than the generic training the facial detection software has undergone.

Words have a definition and a connotation, and meaning is inferred from context cues. What a word means is based on its prevailing word in this context.

No one reasonably uses "facial recognition" or "I recognized a face" to mean "I detected that there was, indeed, a face there."

In this case, the statute doesn't even say "facial recognition". It discusses storing a "scan of face geometry" such that it identifies an individual, and clarifies that an ordinary photograph doesn't count.

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