
Kroger (chain grocery store) is running paramilitary spy gear in parking lots - crankylinuxuser
https://twitter.com/CrankyLinuxUser/status/1229274354497835009
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iamthemonster
They just put security cameras on their own property, or on somebody else's? I
wouldn't have an expectation of privacy in a store's parking lot, just like
hopefully criminals would think twice about breaking into cars in the area.
Are there special circumstances behind these security cameras that I'm not
understanding?

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bilbo0s
Yep.

People are being unreasonable here. Let's say Kroger didn't have security cams
on their lots, and they were to hit the national news because the next Walmart
shooter chose a Kroger instead. I bet the first thing the people complaining
about having security cams in the parking lots would complain about, would be
the lack of security cams in the parking lot.

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_iyig
What makes this “paramilitary spy gear?” It’s some portable security cameras
positioned in a parking lot.

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crankylinuxuser
The company responsible: LiveView Technologies
[https://lvt.co/](https://lvt.co/)

They specialize in surveillance gear for private and nation-state operations.
They work with multiple federal TLA's, and also just announced a joint USA-
Israel surveillance operations.

I talk more of it here
[https://www.reddit.com/r/bloomington/comments/f4xv9t/info_on...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bloomington/comments/f4xv9t/info_on_krogentrified_spy_tower/)

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chrisseaton
‘Nation-state’ doesn’t mean what you think it means. It’s not a fancy way of
saying ‘countries’. It means one small subset of countries such as Japan that
are both nations and states at the same time.

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Bendingo
Hmmm. I didn't know this.

What are some countries that aren't nations?

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chrisseaton
For example the UK is not a nation-state because it’s one state but four
nations.

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mech1234
I've seen similar towers at walmart. I usually park next to them to make it
easy to find my car.

Not really that different in application than the security cameras we've had
for decades though, unless I'm misunderstanding something.

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Glyptodon
Many if not most Walmarts in my area have these. I believe that stores are
installing them when the amount of incidents they have with crazy/wild folks
is large, as I've seen police at the stores with them rather frequently. This
sadly seems somewhat corelated with nearby socioeconomics, but it doesn't
change the fact that the things the police are getting called for are real.
Like another poster I tend to try and park near one if I have to shop at a
place with one.

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1337biz
How is a random clickbait Twitter post making it to the hn frontpage?

This is just a random dude venting against Kroger putting a few security
cameras on their parking lot.

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souterrain
If these are vanilla security cameras, this is a non-story. If, instead, this
is the development of a trend of using cameras with live feeds to law
enforcement, real-time facial recognition or license tag identification, I
think it warrants discussion.

Yes, these are on private property. However, aren’t there ethical issues
around these technologies should they be employed, say, at every food store in
a geographic area?

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DHPersonal
Is this like the Lot Cop system Walmart uses?
[https://www.kshb.com/news/crime/walmart-using-lot-cop-
camera...](https://www.kshb.com/news/crime/walmart-using-lot-cop-cameras-to-
reduce-crime)

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homonculus1
I'm concerned iff they're networked.

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crankylinuxuser
They definitely are networked. This one is over LTE. I used a KerberosSDR to
accurately triangulate and verify that signal was originating from that
spytower.

And they also to appear to have rudimentary "person", "vehicle", and other
tracking, with an API to forward regions of interest to a more robust ML
facial recognition algo.

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someguydave
Wait, did you actually demodulate the LTE Signal? Or did you just treat it as
a source of broadband noise?

