Live data from Hacker News

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

petapixel.com

481–490 of 627 posts

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

#481

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…

A high-trust society cannot be built any way other than force! Once you've removed the dredges of society (by force), all of the good, law-abiding citizens have better lives.

^ found the fascist.

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

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe they just don’t want any violence in their stores at all? I will avoid shopping somewhere that has regular ass whoopings way more than I would avoid shopping somewhere with regular shoplifting.

What are they supposed to do, just let people steal with impunity until they decide the costs are too high, and they have to close the store entirely? I’d rather shop at a store that actually prevents theft, deterring future thieves from stealing. It will be a safer place to shop with lower prices.

Are you saying you would continue shopping in a store where you regularly saw violence against people who might be thieves, on the assumption you’d never be mistaken for one?

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

#483
post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know how it is in the states but in most places in Europe using violence against a violent person is likely to end up very badly for you, even if you are a guard and have the necessary permits and training. You are not going to risk being fined or jailed to stop some criminal from shoplifting from a store that is not even yours.

Violence is okay to perpetrate, but not to respond with. A violent person will probably get it out of their system quickly. If you fight them, though, that creates a feedback loop that won't stop until someone is injured or dead. Just let people express themselves and everyone will be fine.

At first glance I read this as a troll comment. But with your comment history, I'm not so sure.

"Violence is okay to perpetrate, but not to respond with."

That's a value judgement. Here's my value judgement: Violence is not OK to perpetrate and a response of any magnitude to stop that violence is acceptable, up to and including killing the assailant.

Glad I live in a state within the US that supports this value, as well as providing people the means to do what they need to do if they find themselves victimized.

I don't think you'd feel at home here.

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

#484
post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how did we 'forsake' it?

When my mom attended the same high school I graduated from, in the 70s, kids who were hunters would leave firearms in racks on the back of their pickup trucks in the high school parking lot. Not only did said firearms never once get stolen or used to shoot anyone, but, such a thing was simply unthinkable. When I attended the same high school in the 00s, we once were put on a district-wide lockdown because some kid at…

I remember the 70s and my experience was nothing like your mom's. Population centers have always been full of petty crime; rural places are still pretty free from crime. You can still move to plenty of towns with population The one big difference though is today we have school shootings, so folks are pretty humorless about guns near schools. I'd love to hear your ideas for how to solve that, because they keep happening.

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

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> And since every illegal immigrant is already a criminal... >Not to be pedantic, but by definition it is, isn’t it? It is not[0]. Being present in the US without legal status is a civil infraction and not a crime. Unlawful entry is a criminal act however. That said, the vast majority of undocumented folks entered the US legally and overstayed their visas. Which is a civil issue, not a criminal one. Those who made a…

Entering the United States without proper documentation, such as a passport or visa, is considered a federal crime under 8 U.S.C. § 1325. This statute criminalizes unauthorized entry, including entering at unauthorized times or places, evading inspection, or misrepresentation to gain entry.

If you had read the post you’re responding to, you would have seen that it asserts that the majority of undocumented people in the country actually were documented when they entered the country.

Also it’s poor form to copy/paste the same response over and over, even if you were reading the posts you replied to.

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

#486
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That can be seen at many levels of society. ICE also prefers to round up harmless immigrants that show up for court hearings, work in fields, wait at bus stations or deliver their children to day care rather than the "dangerous criminals" that they keep on boasting about. And since every illegal immigrant is already a criminal in their view anyway, why bother?

It’s not ICE’s opinion about who is illegal, it’s congress’s. Didn’t they create the immigration laws that are on the books? I can never understand why people seem to blame the enforcement agencies for the laws they are enforcing. But I agree with the sentiment that they are selecting the easiest targets.

ICE can make them un-illegal by granting them parole, without further action from congress. AFAIK they can even do it unilaterally, though congress could choose to check them later.

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

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are they supposed to do, just let people steal with impunity until they decide the costs are too high, and they have to close the store entirely? I’d rather shop at a store that actually prevents theft, deterring future thieves from stealing. It will be a safer place to shop with lower prices.

Are you saying you would continue shopping in a store where you regularly saw violence against people who might be thieves, on the assumption you’d never be mistaken for one?

No, I’m saying that I would prefer to shop at a store that uses shopkeeper’s privilege to detain thieves using reasonable force.

The legal limits are very clear and simply enacting violence “against people who might be thieves” is not within them.

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

#488
post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Violence is okay to perpetrate, but not to respond with. A violent person will probably get it out of their system quickly. If you fight them, though, that creates a feedback loop that won't stop until someone is injured or dead. Just let people express themselves and everyone will be fine.

This mindset is what perpetually allows the violent to abuse the weak. What a violent person needs is a boot in the mouth. Or as many as necessary until he understands that’s not the way to behave. We are talking about people who generally have a low level of intelligence and do not understand anything else.

Does that mean the boot-weirder is also a violent person in need of a boot to the mouth?

Or is it not “real” violence if it’s justified? In which case, pretty much all violent people will tell you they are justified.

Which means it reduces to “it’s ok for me to be violent because I’m righteous, unlike those thugs”

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

#489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Trust has to be earned. High-trust societies are awesome, but you can't just expect people to trust that they're not going to be robbed in the street if people keep getting robbed in the street, or that the few criminals that do exist will suffer consequences for their behavior if they're not actually suffering those consequences. That sort of culture takes time to build.

> That sort of culture takes time to build.

It does. Generations. We should get started.

Just to be clear, I don't think policing is futile or unethical or anything. But it is symptom control and cannot improve your society. Leaning into policing as a panacea inevitably results in worse outcomes for everybody, police included.

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

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just plain wrong. You can enforce compliance - a police state - but it inevitably worsens outcomes for both people who commit crimes and their victims. But that isn't a high-trust society. In fact a high trust society requires minimal formal policing by definition (and a _lot_ of informal policing by parents, families, friends, and communities). High-trust societies aren't without their problems, too, as trust…

A society where trust is regularly abused isn’t—or will not long remain—a “high-trust” society. Also, it’s not clear me if you really meant that enforcing property laws inevitably worsens outcomes for those who would otherwise have been victims, or if you mean that the now-much-smaller pool of victims have a worse time with effective enforcement. I’d argue that both are false, but the latter at least seems arguable.

> A society where trust is regularly abused isn’t—or will not long remain—a “high-trust” society.

Yes, well, I think you'll find this is how every high-trust society to date has ended up. Trust is abused, usually by the in-group rather than strangers. Abuse of power by politicians, the clergy, authorities like police, etc has largely lead to the collapse of trust across the West.

It's part of the inevitable cyclical nature of social change.

> Also, it’s not clear me if you really meant that enforcing property laws inevitably worsens outcomes for those who would otherwise have been victims, or if you mean that the now-much-smaller pool of victims have a worse time with effective enforcement.

Yes, increasing enforcement without structurally addressing the underlying issues - starting with poverty and wealth inequality - only ever leads to a criminal underclass, more poverty, more crime, and a worse society for everybody, criminals and victims alike.

It doesn't create fewer victims, it creates more (and I'm not being mealy-mouthed and counting the criminals as victims).

There is no way to police yourself into a better society.

Post reply on HN