
Rite Aid deployed facial recognition systems in hundreds of U.S. stores - callwaiting
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-riteaid-software/
======
curiousllama
Hi, I work as a consultant around AI, and I want everyone here to know: every
company with a brick-and-mortar wants to do this. The barriers are (1) tech
stack, (2) use case, and (3) ethics, in that order.

It's not just facial recognition in stores: it's tying face, license plate,
credit card, and phone app into a single customer view; it's pricing based on
your past (and current!) behavior; and it's data consortiums to tie together
data across companies (ever wonder why everyone asks for your phone #? It's
traditionally the primary key in the big-*ss joins).

The expectation of privacy we have online is coming to the real world, make no
mistake. I wish I had a call to action here but... keep yelling, I guess? I
don't have a solution.

~~~
goatinaboat
_it 's pricing based on your past (and current!) behavior_

How will that work in a brick-and-mortar store where there is a price label on
everything?

~~~
glidej
The same way coupons work in drug stores already; there's a stated price and
then there's the price with SuperSaver™ membership, which you have to pull out
of their app and could be subject to any number of personalizations, real-time
or not.

~~~
the_pwner224
Every time I check out at a Kroger store I tell the cashier that I would like
to get a membership card. They don't require you to give a phone number until
you register the card after the checkout - which I don't do because I already
got the benefit of the card at checkout. This won't work at stores that
require phone number first, and still leaves open credit card-based tracking -
for that you actually lose the few % cash back if you want to use cash
instead.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Every time I check out at Kroger (or similar membership-based store) I tell
the cashier that I don't want a membership but I do want the listed sale
price. They always just scan their own card.

~~~
rietta
Most of the time Jenny's phone number works xxx-867-5309.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/867-5309/Jenny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/867-5309/Jenny).
Someone already registered it.

~~~
ohazi
Digits of pi usually work too

------
spaetzleesser
I always wonder if they really get much value out of all this surveillance or
if they just hope to get value.

It seems that a lot of companies are these days are trying to hack their
customers instead of treating them right. In the long run I don't this will
work. I already am getting a very bad taste dealing with a lot of companies
because they seem to view me, the customer, as something to extract money from
instead of a customer to be respected. You notice that for example with a lot
of search results where the company places stuff they want to sell in the
results instead of allowing me to search for what I need.

Either we are going into a very dark future or there will be massive pushback.
Not sure which way it will go.

~~~
take_a_breath
==I always wonder if they really get much value out of all this surveillance
or if they just hope to get value.==

The continued investment implies that the market has spoken: Your data has
value.

The largest companies in the world exist to make money and their investments
exist to further that goal.

~~~
protonfish
Having worked on customer-tracking systems for several companies and seen
executive strategy first hand and compiled reports to assess the effectiveness
of these types of programs I have witnessed clear evidence that what you are
saying is NOT true. Yes, there could theoretically be value to this type of
data but trying to explain this to VPs is pearls before swine.

"They wouldn't do it if it didn't work" should be added to lists of logical
fallacies. People do dumb stuff and make mistakes all the time, but groups of
people are collectively about as clever as a slime mold.

To assume unquestioningly the intelligence of our rulers during the Trump era
is just, wow. I don't know what world you live in, but in mine, the worst
people on the planet are the ones at the wheel.

~~~
take_a_breath
==To assume unquestioningly the intelligence of our rulers during the Trump
era is just, wow.==

Who did this? I laid out the case that modern large corporations (no need to
bring politics into it) are some of the most effective moneymaking machines in
history. We can observe them investing heavily into customer
surveillance/tracking. We can also observe the primary players in this
industry thriving from a revenue and market cap perspective (Google, Facebook,
Amazon).

The hypothesis is that both main street (through revenues) and wall street
(through outrageous P/E ratios) are signaling that the data being collected
does, in fact, have value.

~~~
protonfish
At first I wasn't going to reply because you are clearly not discussing in
good faith (you neglected to address my evidence to the contrary or the flaw
in your reasoning but instead focused on my random afterthought.) But others
might read this so I decided to elaborate a bit.

I was once misinformed with the belief that business' primary goal is to make
money. But when you have the experience of explaining data to a CEO that
clearly shows that their customer surveillance has a negative ROI and that the
conclusions they are drawing from the data are not warranted. (For example, if
you want to claim that your initiative increased sales, you need to compare an
equivalent data point before and after the initiative, not just afterward.) If
you say this and then look into the cold, dead eyes of a sociopath you'll know
how foolish you were to ever assume the point of tracking customer data is to
make money.

I felt dumb ever believing that business leaders care directly about money. I
knew that to be false in high school when they made me read 1984. The lesson
that O'Brien teaches Winston is one that we clearly have not learned.

> The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture.
> The object of power is power.

We can add to that list "The object of unrelenting invasive surveillance is
unrelenting invasive surveillance."

~~~
take_a_breath
I think you are misunderstanding my point, so apologies for being unclear. I
am not questioning the actual validity of the data collection or ROI of the
projects themselves. I am saying that the market can award value to companies
who just signal they are making efforts to "digitally transform" or "invest in
data assets" or "monetize data". It doesn't matter if they accomplish them
tomorrow, the market is giving value today.

Thanks for sharing your CEO experience, that is not a data point I have
encountered. I do think money and power are closely linked, although maybe not
as closely as I assumed.

==I felt dumb ever believing that business leaders care directly about
money.==

Today, what do you believe they care directly about? Power? Ego?

------
luma
Technologies with similar capabilities are being rolled out en masse
throughout retailers across America. I've worked with a regional grocer
supporting one of these projects. There are turnkey systems from several
vendors, but the general concept is similar. Cameras have full coverage of the
retail floorspace from multiple angles. The systems can track an individual
throughout the store, and they can observe someone pulling items off the
shelf.

This is used for a couple things. One, if customer pulls product A off the
shelf instead of product B right next to it, the manufacturer of product B can
purchase the ability to have their coupon print out at checkout to be handed
to somebody who is proven to have an interest in the category. Alternately, it
can be used with self-checkout systems to confirm that the shopper actually
scanned product A, or to alert security to check the shopper's receipt and
cart at exit.

Amazon is offering this sort of technology for checkout-less stores, but
similar offerings for loss-prevention and targeted marketing are online and
available.

It would be trivial to add face recognition to this stack, and I strongly
suspect it is in fact offered if you ask for it. The use case there would be
focused around the loss prevention aspect, and that's a huge financial driver
for implementing these systems.

Another interesting feature of this market is that the websites for the
products themselves don't really advertise the full functionality of the
product. You won't see the scale of the offering until you get to the in-
person sales demo and slide decks. It feels like the vendors know how the
technology could be perceived.

~~~
wasdfff
This sort of thing is a little perverse imo. I don’t think anyone should be
punished for stealing food, that’s a crime of hopeless poverty. My roomates
were broke in college, spending nearly all money on rent and school. If
someone wanted meat that week, they would ring up the chuck as bananas at self
checkout. Otherwise it was rice and beans.

~~~
potta_coffee
Rice and beans will sustain life. Theft isn't ok. I've used the food bank
before and been homeless once, shoplifted once or twice and felt bad about it.
Never once was it the last resort, there's always somewhere to get food. As a
college student? That's just embarrassing. You can buy 30 packages of ramen
for like $2.

~~~
diag
Well, anybody starving is immoral. Food theft only hurts profits, not people.
Also, ramen is wildly unhealthy being starch and salt with no other nutrients.

------
jaybeeayyy
Why do people focus so much on how the data can potentially go back to China?
It just feels like a redirection to distract us from the privacy violations
here in the US. I understand why it's a concern but it just seems like every
article always ends up talking mostly about Chinese companies, the Chinese
government, how they respond to accusations etc. instead of focusing on our
government, our corporations, our security forces all using or wanting to use
technology like this.

Take the "Orwellian surveillance" part. We get about 2 paragraphs about how
surveillance in the US is largely unregulated and whatnot and then 4 of them
about China. The other sections afterwards seem like they were written to
almost justify the use of surveillance in US corporations.

Maybe it's all in my head but it's just something I keep noticing whenever
there's writing about surveillance in the US.

~~~
finnthehuman
For the same reason news coverage of things that are bad for everyone focus on
how it's bad for black people, or how it's bad for women. Because the press
seem categorically incapable of covering negative aspects of society without a
uniquely-victimized or uniquely-malicious group involved.

The conventional wisdom is that they need an angle to make readers care. My
hot take is that they're too fucking thick to even begin making an intelligent
analysis of anything but the most black-and-white topics. If something is
actually contentious they just report on a handful of fashionable opinions as
co-equal, trashtalk the low-status opinions, and don't even bother
acknowledging the principals and/or perceived realities that lead people to
various opinions.

~~~
gpanders
I agree with you, however I think a significant portion of the blame for this
kind of emergent behavior comes from the consumers of said media. They're
producing what they know will sell.

------
Aunche
I genuinely don't understand what the big deal is. Brick and mortar stores
lose a lot lose of money in theft. Walmart alone loses $3 billion each each
year. It's their private space, so it makes sense that they want to know who's
going inside. The majority of shoppers are using their credit card and store
rewards card anyways, so they already know who most of the paying customers
are anyways.

~~~
scottwd9
If facial recognition were 99.9% accurate, it would confuse someone with at
least 350,000 other people in the US.

~~~
Aunche
If it's not useful, companies aren't going to pay money to use it. As Rite Aid
put it, "companies seem to be scaling back or rethinking their efforts around
facial recognition given increasing uncertainty around the technology’s
utility."

~~~
timmytokyo
The companies don't care about a few false matches here or there. But if
you're one of the people it keeps incorrectly identifying as a criminal who
needs to be escorted out of the store, it will matter to you.

------
acomjean
There was a company called "stop lift" that deployed cameras on its check out
lines. Looking for fraud by employees and probably self checkout. Whenever I'm
in a store at the cashiers I look up and often see lots of camera domes above
the register.

[https://www.stoplift.com/about/why-
stoplift/](https://www.stoplift.com/about/why-stoplift/)

~~~
nitrogen
There's been a trend in self checkout to have at least two cameras directly on
each machine, one in the screen pointed at your face, and one overhead on a
mast pointed downward.

I am not a fan.

~~~
WarOnPrivacy
I've seen the playback from the camera above and I'm okay with that one.

The other one targeting my face? Not so much (tho I'm less bothered, since
wearing a mask).

------
duaoebg
I wonder if it’s inevitable that we will get denial of entry based facial
recognition systems. It’s legally difficult to stop people from leaving the
store whereas it’ll be much easier to prevent them from entering.

If someone shoplifts then they get banned from the chain, or a network of
chains. This would be an alternative to police involvement. Restitution could
be done proportionality and privately.

Of course there will be issues with it but I’m sure it could be cheaper to
figure this out than the alternative loss prevention solutions.

~~~
TheJoeMan
From a profit motivation, Rite-Aid (and everyone else) would really like
everyone to give them money instead of banning them forever. So I really feel
the market will sort this out, maybe a 3 strike system or temporary
suspensions.

Now that I think about it, we already have temporary suspensions from Walmart
and the like if you get caught. How is this different than a guard just
watching the CCTV all day?

------
grogenaut
A few years back I stayed at the Nugget in downtown vegas. I hate vegas but
friends wanted to watch the sweet 16 there. I was actaully somewhat happy with
the nugget, it was freshly upgraded and pretty nice. Food was ok and ok
priced, and the vegas main street is a better feel for me than the mega
hotels.

My friends paid, I paid cash, I skipped checkin and went right to the room.

What flipped was my friend walked up to a blackjack table and the dealer
greeted him by name. Another friend who had also checked in was greeted by the
cash out teller by name. They didn't seem to know who I was.

I started paying for everything in cash and was like "welp, guess I'm
definitely never coming back to vegas"

------
FpUser
"the retailer used state-of-the-art facial recognition technology from a
company with links to China and its authoritarian government."

And today along with countless millions of North Americans I dialed my mom on
a piece of technology that was made in China and its authoritarian Government
(TM). FFS can't they stop shoving big bad China into every story. However bad
it is not China's fault for US corporation being A-hole.

Added for clarification: This is not to protect China, rather to point out
this style of "reporting" that lately seems to have very little to do with the
true reporting as it used to be.

~~~
nova22033
An internet connected camera made in China and using software from a Chinese
company is a slightly bigger risk than an iPhone made in China.

------
andialo
After IBM, Microsoft and many others publicly declared (for marketing reasons
no doubt) to stop working and delivering face recognition systems, a new
competitor quickly fills the space. Color me surprised.

~~~
Shivetya
Yes expected. I posted before that by trying to stop companies we work for or
other well known companies from operating in this space we give up far too
much opportunity to police and possibly influence the outcome.

Facial Recognition is coming along with all other sorts of identification.
They key to making sure these are not abuse is to get embedded into the
process of making them. This way issues of privacy, accuracy, and
accountability, can all be addressed.

Currently far too many here, especially here, are the head in sand type. If
they shout it down and declare it evil and see a big name step down they
declare it fixed. Ignoring the fact the world is a big place and other
companies and countries really don't care what your opinion is. So get in
there and make sure where you live that this technology when it does become
common place has the structures in place to protect the individual.

Because you can damn well guarantee it won't be corporations abusing it, it
will be politically oriented groups who will exploit it. You think the cancel
culture is bad now with their name and shame combined with using sycophants to
leak records if not outright court challenges to sealed records, wait till
they abuse this

~~~
spaetzleesser
"Because you can damn well guarantee it won't be corporations abusing it, it
will be politically oriented groups who will exploit it. You think the cancel
culture is bad now with their name and shame combined with using sycophants to
leak records if not outright court challenges to sealed records, wait till
they abuse this "

I am very worried that there will be a lot going on behind the scenes. Public
cancel culture is bad but secret cancel culture is even worse.

------
cosmodisk
I think I have to agree with some comments that it's very unlikely companies
do get a lot of value from these surveillance programmes. From a side, it all
sounds super advanced and promising,but in the reality it's usually more down
to earth: After buying a dehumidifier from Amazon, they keep sending emails
with various dehumidifier options.. Like I need 20 of them. Sainsbury's tracks
my shopping via Nectar card just to give me 5p discount on the cucumbers and
crisps I sometimes buy. Where's all the sophistication? With all the tracking
and analytics, one would think they could better track shopper sentiment,yet
thousands of tons of unsold food and other products get dumped every day.
Also,just because someone is doing it, that doesn't mean it's profitable. A
lot of CEOs get sold all this AI/ML hype and because they have genuine fears
of being left out, they just roll with it.

------
bzb3
Doesn't seem like a productive battle. It's only upsides for stores that roll
out facial recognition. If you want this stopped you will need legislation.

~~~
tyingq
I suppose it doesn't scale, but public shaming seemed to work in this case:

 _" Last week, however, after Reuters sent its findings to the retailer, Rite
Aid said it had quit using its facial recognition software."_

Though likely because of the higher use in low income neighborhoods than
facial recognition overall.

~~~
BlackCherry
Public shaming didn't work, literally at all. The article was released
literally today, and the program was ended before anyone knew about it other
than reporters. And this won't deter other corporations from employing this
technology.

We absolutely need legislation to permanently stop this. The free market is
not going to magically pop up a competing brick and mortar that doesn't spy on
us and/or sell/give our data to other corporations/governments.

------
whoopdedo
Sounds to me like someone sold Rite Aid a sow's purse, and is no wonder for a
chain that had to go begging to its competitors to bail it out of insolvency.
(They attempted then failed to merge with CVS and settled for giving more than
half of their stores to Walgreens.)

------
soupfordummies
Yet another reason to wear a mask everywhere in public :P

~~~
eunos
As I have commented here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23257887](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23257887)

Overcoming masks is a feasible challenge and will be solved with, I assume,
modest efforts.

Side note: I tried my Android phone face recognition while using a mask.
Interestingly, as long as the nose structure can be perceived, it managed to
recognize me.

------
mensetmanusman
Reminds me of the entire city of London.

~~~
WarOnPrivacy
I appreciate it when Earth's Surveillance Capital is brought up as an abject
lesson.

------
wnmurphy
Great. What's the real-world equivalent of doing 90% of your browser searches
in an incognito window?

~~~
alexashka
Acknowledging that you can't change what people will do and that you will be
dead soon is the best incognito window I've found.

It's incognito from your stupid brain patterns that want to find something to
worry about incessantly. It's not that the stupid thoughts stop - you just pet
them like stupid little things that they are and move on with your life.

------
lsllc
Another reason to wear that damn mask!

------
catalogia
Do these systems continue to work in the mask era, or have they wasted their
money?

Personally I've taken to wearing masks and large sunglasses, just because I
can. I suppose they could still track my gait, posture, hair style, etc.

~~~
larrik
> Rite Aid said it had quit using its facial recognition software. It later
> said all the cameras had been turned off.

~~~
catalogia
The article doesn't make clear whether they turned the system off because it
wasn't working due to masks, or simply wasn't doing what they meant it to do
in the first place.

> _“This decision was in part based on a larger industry conversation,” the
> company told Reuters in a statement, adding that “other large technology
> companies seem to be scaling back or rethinking their efforts around facial
> recognition given increasing uncertainty around the technology’s utility.”_

Will it come back when the masks go away, or have they realized that it was
never useful in the first place?

(They also claim it had nothing to do with race, which is kind of farcical
since it's well known these recognition systems have trouble with race. It
obviously has _something_ to do with race, even if they're choosing to ignore
that issue.)

In brief, my questions are these: Can these systems track the movements of
people wearing masks? (I suspect they can, perhaps with some tweaking.) And
assuming that these systems can provide accurate movement data through the
store, does analysis of that movement data actually provide actionable
suggestions of how to arrange the store that, when put to the test, actually
increase sales? (I suspect the efficacy of this analysis is greatly overstated
by those selling it, and stores are beginning to realize this.)

~~~
stronglikedan
Rite Aid being national (global?), and mask use being regional, I doubt the
masks had much to do with the decision. Just my two cents.

------
xwdv
Masks will probably remain socially acceptable for quite some time post-COVID.
If you don’t agree with facial recognition you can just wear one.

~~~
zapdrive
[https://apnews.com/bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a](https://apnews.com/bf75dd1c26c947b7826d270a16e2658a)

~~~
deelowe
It's no different than browser fingerprinting. "You can just use a VPN/spoof
your user agent!" It's not that simple. Just like how browser fingerprinting
has evolved to the point where it's virtually impossible to get around, these
real world systems will follow suit. Hair color, eye color, skin color, the
types of clothes your wear, your gait, height, gender, path you take through
the store, car you drive, license plate, stores you frequent, heck... even
where you choose to park or which door you choose to enter could all be used
identify individuals/families.

Keep in mind, just like with web analytics, these solutions will be provided
by 3rd parties which will aggregate this data across multiple businesses.

------
tomphoolery
you'd think they would be able to actually give me the right scrip with this
tech but fun fact, no.

------
holidayacct
If you understood how bad the prescription drug problem was in the United
States you wouldn't remotely be surprised.

~~~
WarOnPrivacy
>If you understood how bad the prescription drug problem was in the United
States

'Was' is the key word. The vast bulk of pill mills were shuttered a decade
ago.

The current prescription drug problem is the steadily increasing difficulty
for people in pain to get prescription pain relief.

------
dilandau
What companies are behind the development of these camera+software solutions?
I reckon it's just a couple?

------
quotemstr
I have no problem with this move. One of my general principles, one I try to
apply everywhere, it is: if you can perform an information processing task
with your eyes and brain, you should have the freedom to program a computer to
do that task. Under this principle, I have to allow public facial recognition:
any functioning human can already do it, just at a smaller scale.

On other words, Rite-Aid employees can already recognize your face. Deal with
it.

Why is my principle so important? Because the alternative conflicts with the
computational enhancement of the mind, which is far more important than any
illusory gains to had from banning this tech or that tech.

~~~
gruez
>Under this principle, I have to allow public facial recognition: any
functioning human can already do it, just at a smaller scale.

So you'd be fine with mega-corps or the government tracking everyone's
movements with drones, and cataloging it into a massive database? After all,
you can already do that with a bunch of minimum-wage workers and a map.

>Why is my principle so important? Because the alternative conflicts with the
computational enhancement of the mind, which is far more important than any
illusory gains to had from banning this tech or that tech.

So basically you want technological singularity, even if it means turning the
world into a cyberpunk dystopia?

~~~
quotemstr
> So basically you want technological singularity, even if it means turning
> the world into a cyberpunk dystopia?

Yes. That singularity is coming anyway and it might as well be on our terms.

~~~
jodrellblank
Who is "our" in this sentence, Rite Aid?

