
The Secretive Business of Facial-Recognition Software in Retail Stores - NN88
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/retailers-are-using-facial-recognition-technology-too.html
======
roordan
I worked for a retail analytics company that would do things like track
WiFi/Bluetooth devices, faces, and general shopper traffic.

It had been a few years since I've worked there but the real problem was that
all of this didn't work. All these promises to our clients that's you would
get data equivalent of online shoppers, in store, but it simply wouldn't work.
Guess people age, gender, previously seem face, tracking where they walked.
All horribly inaccurate.

Though apparently it's an industry wide thing as "imputing" was common
practice. Don't have the data? Make it up!

~~~
TomMckenny
I don't know about retail but if you are ever in Las Vegas or Reno, go into a
casino and walk past every slot machine to the reservation desk and ask for a
room. Availability and prices will be far worse than booking after gambling or
even phoning from the parking lot.

~~~
bradknowles
Yeah, well -- LV is the original source of much of what we know today about
data mining. So, it makes sense that they would still be decades ahead of the
rest of the field.

~~~
swebs
Which makes it so odd that they don't use member cards, whereas every casino
in Atlantic City does.

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Nasrudith
Really this whole business with tracking obsession is highly silly in my
opinion. They gather this data with all of this overhead under the assumption
that it will somehow boost sales instead of improving service or price margin.
You know things that actually helped Amazon gain retail traction.

Shoplifting is an even worse excuse given that most retail theft is done by
their employees and they seem to show no signs of trying to boost loyalty and
engagement.

~~~
dsnuh
Interesting stat on employee theft being bigger than shoplifting, can you link
to some support for that?

~~~
Nasrudith
Huh apparently things shifted some that it managed to drop to number 2 despite
it being the status quo for years.

[https://www.thebalancesmb.com/top-sources-of-retail-
shrinkag...](https://www.thebalancesmb.com/top-sources-of-retail-
shrinkage-2890265)

~~~
davidkuhta
Thank you for still posting.

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bowmessage
I'm on the verge of wearing an infrared LED baseball cap everywhere I go now.
Maybe I'm overly paranoid, but better to start earlier than later?

Also, are infrared LED disguise devices easily defeated? E.g. can camera
installers just add an additional infrared filter to their setup?

~~~
fossuser
It won't save you - gait detection is also being used in places like China and
that's a lot harder to protect yourself from.

Systems also tend to use regular and infrared images for detection too (at
least in the case of ALPR).

We need people to care about these things and how the data is used, we need
laws for rules around collection, access, and rights. We need to work together
towards maintaining the ideas that support western democracy rather than
moving towards nationalism.

I worry that instability from climate change and the refugee crisis that comes
from that instability will make things worse, along with the current
centralization of wealth/inequality issues and rise of more populist right
wing movements.

Individual technical solutions will likely not do much to protect you if we
lose the cultural framework around democracy.

~~~
tzakrajs
Exoskeleton that walks with a pseudo-random gait.

~~~
fossuser
“Did you find him in the video feed sir?”

“We got nothing via gait detection, but the intern noticed this guy walking
around in an exoskeleton suit so we sent a unit out to bring him in”

------
40acres
At this point it seems like we've lost the "war" against intrusive data
collection. Between my google searches, credit score, bank transactions &
location data, you could build a really accurate model of my life, probably
yours too.

The only respite we have is that all this data is discrete and spread among
different actors, but we've already seen that the massive data collectors are
just getting bigger and bigger, every new product is an avenue to collect
another data set.

~~~
whatshisface
How could we write a law to ban this without putting undue restrictions on
legitimate technology? We could just have them stop.

~~~
root_axis
> _We could just have them stop._

How? There are no political factions in the U.S. that would support such an
agenda. Which party do you imagine taking up this issue?

~~~
whatshisface
You could have said the same thing about gay marriage or marijuana
legalization in 2001. It's not like political change is impossible. In fact
this change would be easier because it benefits the majority, unlike gay
marriage or legal marijuana which were both minority issues.

~~~
root_axis
> _You could have said the same thing about gay marriage or marijuana
> legalization in 2001_

I take your point, but I don't think it's the same thing. There was no vested
commercial interest in maintaining the gay marriage ban and even then marriage
equality was fiercely opposed and narrowly achieved and would be impossible to
achieve today and into the foreseeable political future. It was also a no-
brainer issue for Democrats that earned them a lot of support and did not
conflict with Democratic donor interests. Marijuana is more complicated,
especially if we are mindful of the fact that it is still a Schedule I drug
(while e.g. cocaine, fentanyl and meth are Schedule II), but there was at
least the gigantic bales of cash to create a clear incentive to drive
legalization forward despite the fact that marijuana businesses are still
being hamstrung by the banks and are under explicit threat by the attorney
general. Still, marijuana is a very old issue with a clear binary choice that
most of the citizenry is educated about...

Now, compare all that with a ratcheting up of privacy restrictions wherein the
_only_ possible outcome is the loss of billions of dollars in monetizable
customer data and personal information, not to mention all the usual suspects
that continuously endeavor to magnify the scope and breadth of the
surveillance state for their own ends. Additionally, there is no clear binary
choice like with marijuana and gay marriage; any viable solution will require
an imperfect, nuanced, and somewhat technical approach to being solved and
this type of solution is the hardest thing to do in our politics right now.
There is no incentive for any faction to tamp down on data collection and the
populace has given the signal that it doesn't really care about these issues
(e.g. the equifax breach had no legal and minimal financial consequences for
the company, and people have already forgotten). Additionally, there is also a
sizable libertarian population among the technically literate that will oppose
any kind of serious restrictions on data-collection because they are
ideologically opposed to regulations. Imagine the furor on this forum if a
presidential candidate seriously suggested something within the ballpark of EU
style privacy laws - the entire front page would be flagged out of existence.
Maybe I am pessimistic, but I just can't see a viable route to privacy
restrictions.

edit: I just want to add: I'm not saying "no progress is possible forever,
give up". I'm responding to the cavalier tone of your suggestion that "we can
just make them stop". It's certainly possible, it's just very unlikely within
the foreseeable future.

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MrTonyD
Yeah, I have some friends working on this for WalMart. They get all the social
media info for every customer, and they track across their stores. Of course,
there are NSA databases available too, and they are probably using those (many
NSA databases are run by private companies so that the NSA can deny any
knowledge and skirt any privacy laws.) And WalMart is known for firing people
who are trying to Unionize and finding reasons to fire all the people they
have been talking to (wonder how Walmart knows who the pro-union people have
been talking to?). This is not good. Essentially, any activity which is not
approved can be stopped with sufficient monitoring. Getting very frightening.

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ChrisArchitect
Hello Mr. Yakamoto! Welcome back to the GAP! How'd those assorted tank tops
work out for you?

~~~
tyingq
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bXJ_obaiYQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bXJ_obaiYQ)
for anyone that missed the reference.

------
skh
In an effort to combat the rise of Amazon retail stores have decided to make
going to them a miserable experience. From dumb questions asking if you are a
rewards member to personally intrusive questions asking what big plans you
have this weekend to this. More and more I dread actually going to a store.
Amazon’s cashierless stores use cameras but that cost is compensated by making
the shopping experience better.

~~~
Zelphyr
The annoyance and inconvenience of having a cashier ask me about my weekend
pales in comparison to what Amazon is doing with my data. And I think we'll
find in the coming years that they are every bit as nefarious when it comes to
the use of our private information as Facebook is.

~~~
skh
My sarcasm was to make a point. The way for retail to combat Amazon is not to
become even more annoying and give people reasons to not want to go to a
store. People value convenience a lot. Hence Facebook's rise despite their
shenanigans. If you insist on doing the nefarious you must make certain to
make it convenient. Retail stores shoot themselves in the foot with their
annoying behavior because they are neither more convenient or less annoying.

I've resolved myself to the fact that I live in a surveillance world now. My
goal is to limit the knowledge to as few companies as possible. What I'm not
willing to do is to be annoyed whilst giving my information to stupid retail
stores.

------
hammock
How can you have this article without a mention of Amazon Go, the store that
literally allows you to walk out of the store without paying, due to facial
recognition?

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btbuildem
Time to start wearing these:

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BE_3z2XPMac](https://www.instagram.com/p/BE_3z2XPMac)

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BRO4R_9DlUW](https://www.instagram.com/p/BRO4R_9DlUW)

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BV2SmYnDXSy](https://www.instagram.com/p/BV2SmYnDXSy)

~~~
miketery
Oh cool! where do i get one?

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LeoPanthera
"CV Dazzle" is a style of hair / makeup that is designed to prevent facial
recognition. [https://cvdazzle.com](https://cvdazzle.com)

~~~
lozaning
[https://xkcd.com/1105/](https://xkcd.com/1105/)

And now all the security people are on the lookout for the person in strange
makeup.

~~~
LeoPanthera
You know what - I'm OK with that. Security _people_ have been tracking other
_people_ since the dawn of civilization.

It's security _robots_ I have a problem with.

------
amelius
"But it's only to provide the customer a better experience"

------
olivermarks
[https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2018/10/17/facial-
recognition-t...](https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2018/10/17/facial-recognition-
technology-nyc-councilman-ritchie-torres/)

~~~
mixmastamyk
I'd prefer the law require opt-in consent for facial recognition, but would
take a sign over nothing.

~~~
olivermarks
I agree, the least we should hope for is an informational warning with details
of what data is being collected, like the agreements we click to sign with
social networking sites that most people don't bother to read....

------
LinuxBender
Are there any laws that protect minors from this form of tracking and data
collection?

~~~
cmac2992
Seems like it falls under COPPA

------
hartz
The article mentions that Food Link and Giant (both part of Ahold Delhaize
USA) are two supermarkets that responded to the ACLU survey saying that they
do not use face recognition. I searched around and found the more complete
list of companies' responses: [https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-
technology/surveillance-te...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-
technology/surveillance-technologies/are-stores-you-shop-secretly-using-face)
(near the bottom). The tl;dr though is that most companies refused to answer.

~~~
bradknowles
Did you mean "Food Lion"?

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mkgolden
I have always found those cameras in the Walmart self check-out lines
extremely sketchy. They DO NOT need to be there.

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imgabe
Time to start buying everything used. There's enough crap out there that
whatever you need, someone else is probably already trying to get rid of it.
Let them take the tracking hit.

~~~
justtopost
Gonna pass on used food.

They will get you somewhere.

~~~
JMCQ87
Grow your own food! ;)

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mattnewton
Even more reason to shop online..

Though just not going outside is not a solution, we definitely need
legislation for this.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
This is absolutely an invasion of our privacy, tracking our every move, but is
shopping online any better? The only real difference is that online they can't
track your face, and in real life they can't link you to your taste in
pornography.

~~~
14
Well, I wonder if they can link you to your taste in pornography? Facial
recognition detects you keep showing up in the adult health aisle in Walmart
every few weeks for condoms and lubrication. Also facial recognition noticed
you spend 15% more time looking in the direction of other males verses females
we predict there is a 74% chance that you are homosexual. I agree facial
recognition is an invasion of privacy and seems to have all sorts of bad uses.
I hope we as a society at least limit corporations from using it against us. I
highly doubt we will stop the government from using it but we don't need
Walmart tracking us.

~~~
acct1771
> I highly doubt we will stop the government from

Self-fulfilling prophecy.

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sharkweek
This reminds me of that facial recognition shopping scene in Minority Report

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiDMlFycNrw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiDMlFycNrw)

Of course I thought this movie looked 100 years in the future, not 15

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rvense
All the advertisement screens in the Copenhagen metro have cameras now, in
addition to the security cameras.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Any good source one can read on this? How does that square with GDPR?

~~~
rvense
I don't know if anyone's written about it. I don't even know if they're on,
I've just noticed that they all have small but obvious cameras. They're marked
ClearChannel, so I assume they own the boards and cameras.

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avip
Face recognition is a publicly available built-in feature of security cameras
market leaders s.a Motorolla, Honeywell, Hikvision and probably more. Had been
so for quite the time (1 year? 2 years?). So I'm not sure how the word
"secretive" made its way into this piece.

~~~
paulcole
It's a way to make the headline more appealing without changing the article.
Another good use of this is "quietly."

[https://www.geekwire.com/2017/tech-news-sites-quietly-
rely-w...](https://www.geekwire.com/2017/tech-news-sites-quietly-rely-word-
create-drama-headlines-analysis-reveals/)

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chris_engel
I wonder what happens if you paint an additional pair of eyes on your cheeks.

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collyw
Is no one selling glasses or whatever that can crew up the cameras? I remember
seeing proof on concept things a couple of years back.

~~~
faleidel
Maybe this? [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ivancash/irl-glasses-
gl...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ivancash/irl-glasses-glasses-that-
block-screens)

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frickenx
I would think with this technology and the right implementation, there would
be no need for jails in the distant future.

~~~
VikingCoder
I don't think I follow.

Bob killed his neighbor. On camera, recorded for all to see.

Now you're saying we can continue letting Bob walk around, just because the
camera will see it again?

I don't mean to be insulting, I don't get what you're trying to say.

~~~
swsieber
I think they're suggesting that Bob won't kill his neighbor if he's on camera.

~~~
VikingCoder
Thanks for explaining. But there are bank robberies today. And everyone knows
banks have cameras. :)

