Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

petapixel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 627 posts

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

#571

Post by immibis »

bko wrote: post #255
gotoeleven wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think another framework is blank slatism. For instance, you can look at two countries and if one country has a higher prison population, that country over polices because every country and its people should have the same criminality level because all cultures and people are identical. I remember feeling great shame that the US had such a high imprisonment rate. This led to a big decrease in state prison population…

So now you're asserting there is something uniquely, inherently bad about Americans that causes them to need to be locked in jail at 6 times the rate of every other country.

Do you know what that thing might be, and how to fix it?

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

#572

Post by pixl97 »

adamrezich wrote: post #525
pixl97 wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

40,000 people live within a few miles of me. That isn't a city, that's a suburb or a town. Also the leaving guns in vehicles thing could also be affected by another number here. And that is miles driven per capita and vehicles owned per household averages. That is you could have the same total number of thieves that steal guns, especially among those with more poverty, but as you increase the number of cars groups th…

I assure you there's quite the difference between a city (that even has “City” it its name!) of 80,000, and a town of 500. It's easy to see conflating the two as “high density population dweller ignorance” for anyone who has lived in or near all three (500, 80,000, 1M+).

I mean yea, I'm from bumfuk nowhere farmland where there was nothing close. Of course that meant a lot in the late 70s where you might get 3 channels on the TV. We were very disconnected from the world back then.

That's no longer true. Everyone has a cellphone pretty much everywhere. You don't think of hoodlum stuff while bored, you watch a livestream of it and think "I could do that too".

We live in a much different world now.

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

#573

Post by nobody9999 »

1659447091 wrote: post #559
lostlogin wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be misinterpreting the situation, but the idea of going on a shopping expedition with a gun is absolutely foreign to me. The whole situation is wildly outside my experience. I live in New Zealand.

> the idea of going on a shopping expedition with a gun is absolutely foreign to me If you ever visit Texas take a look around the entrances to stores, shops, restaurants, bars etc. You should see large white signs with a "gun-buster" and a 30.0* code. or a large "51%" symbol in red. It would be incredibly rare to see a person with an open carry gun thou 30.05 is to tell people that "constitutional carry" (carry with…

That's fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

It reminds me of "Posted"[0] signs that I've seen in lots of places in the southern US. Growing up in the Northeast, we didn't have such things[1].

[0] "Posted" is shorthand for "Private Property. No Trespassing." I get that the word "posted" means "I posted the sign. Pay attention or you might get arrested or shot." But I have no idea how the latter got shortened to the former. It's also an interesting regionalism, although not specifically related to legal codes and their taxonomy.

[1] Where I grew up we just had "No Trespassing" or "Private Property" signs.

Edit: expanded footnote [0].

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

#574

Post by pixl97 »

qingcharles wrote: post #545
criddell wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end though, unless they stop you and find the merchandise or have you on video with the stuff outside of the store, there's no proof you stole anything. It's circumstantial which is relatively weak. Plus, Walmart doesn't prosecute anybody. They hand the evidence over to the police and the the district attorney decides if they want to prosecute. Walmart can file a civil suit which I'm wondering if that's what t…

From much experience in this, I've never seen Walmart file a civil suit. They don't technically prosecute anyone, but in the county where I was witness to prosecutions for Walmart shop-lifting they were putting a lot of pressure on the DA office. They would bring a ton of muscle, investigators, attorneys, print outs, DVDs, etc. They would push their prosecutions hard when they wanted to.

Walmart is pretty political too.

https://corporate.walmart.com/purpose/esgreport/governance/e...

>Walmart works with policy makers and public safety officials to ensure we are providing a safe workspace for our associates and a safe, enjoyable shopping experience for our customers. The nature of retail crime varies across our stores and geographies, and includes complex organized retail crime. Walmart works closely with our trade associations to support efforts to pass laws (such as the Combatting Organized Retail Crime Act) that ensure these crimes incur meaningful penalties, and that law enforcement have resources to appropriately prosecute these crimes.

Needless to say the can help sway local elections based on how they push certain political figures.

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

#575

Post by HDThoreaun »

brookst wrote: post #482
frumplestlatz wrote: post #466

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?

Yes. Thievery makes everything in the store more expensive. I have no interest in shopping at a store that has thieves in it and law enforcement does nothing to stop thieves in my area.

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

#576

Post by stogot »

bevhill wrote: post #334
lightedman wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the only way to stop this is to simply get the CEOs arrested using the same technology they so desperately want to use. False positive their ass into a cell and I'll guarantee you this garbage will stop fast.

Most policy decisions should put people in prison, laws be damned. We have to reign in corporate overreach while we still have a government to do it with.

Well that’s a not even a slippery slope. Thats straight authoritarianism. Imagine if the sitting US president followed your advice.

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

#577

Post by HDThoreaun »

dml2135 wrote: post #339
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…

Getting rid of checkout clerks, forcing customers to use self-checkout, and then surveilling and policing said customers to make sure that the unpaid labor they are now performing is done flawlessly is just so dystopic. IMO, if you want to have self-checkout, you need to accept a higher rate of loss. That's the tradeoff for replacing your employees with robots and forcing labor onto the consumer. You can't have your…

This is a crazy take imo. Grocery stores are way better with self checkout. No more lines, and Im legitimately faster than the cashiers ever were.

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

#578

Post by radixdiaboli »

MisterTea wrote: post #269
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…

> yet bearded street person with big trash bag full of product makes them think of lovable Santa? They do not want to confront trash bag man for good reason. What happened is people who don't give a fuck and have no problem with using violence realized there's nothing stopping them from loading up bags of goods and walking out of the store. "Oh you want to stop me? just try mother fucker." Even so called security gua…

Someone has never worked retail. They know they can get away with it because pretty much any corporate store has a policy that employees can't try to stop them. An employee at a local REI was fired for trying to stop one of the daily thefts they were having.

Point being, willingness to engage in violence has nothing to do with it.

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

#579

Post by HDThoreaun »

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

Wearing a mask when in a building of sick people remains a good idea

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

#580

Post by amy_petrik »

mothballed wrote: post #480
conradev wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will also go to jail. It’s not self-defense: https://www.ktvu.com/news/san-francisco-walgreens-manager-co...

That's gonna depend where the jury is coming from. SF, yes. "Try that in a small town" hicks probably not.

more like "try that in a small town" police will see what happened, "atta boy" and get on with other things. never even reaches the courts.
Post reply on HN