If they're collecting biometric data without posting a sign they are breaking the law, that requirement to post a sign is why this story about Wegmans is public at all, Wegmans posted signs as required.
If they are, and aren't posting signs, that would be a story in itself. Of course it could still be happening, it sounds like the law is fairly toothless, but it did get Wegmans to post the sign, so probably not useless.
A major point of facial recognition is to generate those consequences.
You don't have to try to physically stop them the moment they walk out, when there isn't time to call the police and you don't want a cashier getting physically involved and there's no security officer at the moment.
You have the evidence, and can call the cops the next time they enter the store.
> Switch to stores with stronger privacy policies: Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and Food Bazaar have not announced biometric scanning.
Local member owned food co-ops would be a good alternative if there's one near you.
They don't have to be fancy and expensive. My local co-op strives to offer affordable options on most staples and bulk foods, and frequently undercuts the chains (including Wegmans) on produce, especially local produce when they can source it.
Do they have 20 types of chips and 300 cereals? No, but I can shop in a 20-30 minutes instead of the hour minimum Wegmans demands.
It recently dawned on me the cognitive simplicity of selecting a smaller store like the co-op. At our local one, the employees are really nice and selections really easy.
I have not yet moved over, but I can see a lot of advantages.
> "We trust our customers and do not conduct surveillance on them. When necessary, we take appropriate action, including having security cameras and security guards in our stores, to help ensure the safety of our customers and Crew Members," the company said.
That was in 2018 and it seems in 2024 they still do not have cameras. New locations I've seen do not either. I wouldn't be surprised if they weighed the cost of installing and maintaining cameras and the cost of "a string of robberies" and determined cameras were more expensive.
> Honestly, I would just assume every grocery store has security cameras doing facial recognition to cross-reference and catch repeat shoplifters.
This is their purpose, they're used to build cases over time, instead of single instances of petty theft, until shoplifters can be charged with felonies when the cumulative amount that they stole reaches felony levels.
I know of at least one chain that uses them to flag certain people to loss prevention or security when they enter the store, either because of shoplifting or because they were trespassed in the past.
I don't think people grasp how much control over how they are viewed by the business/government world they lost/have. Also, dynamic pricing is a pleasant sounding name for price gouging.
>This is their purpose, they're used to build cases over time, instead of single instances of petty theft, until shoplifters can be charged with felonies when the cumulative amount that they stole reaches felony levels.
I've heard the idea of combining multiple misdemeanor thefts to make a felony. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
Wouldn't that require an ongoing criminal conspiracy/enterprise to "combine" such disparate acts into a single, chargeable crime?
Some state laws do "upgrade" crimes, both misdemeanor --> felony and felony --> more serious felony based on prior convictions, but not (AFAIK) with multiple separate acts whose aggregate value is greater than the cutoff between petty theft and grand theft.
What's more, it's the local prosecutor who decides what charges to bring against someone accused of shoplifting, not the "Loss Prevention" team at a store or its corporate parent.
The idea just seems unlike how local/state laws and justice systems work in the US.
I could be (and likely am) wrong about this, but I've been unable to find state laws[0] which specify that multiple, separate acts of shoplifting can be combined into a single grand theft felony.
Would you share which states have such laws? It would be much appreciated!
There's aggregation laws that allow shoplifting incidents to be added up to a total charge.
Also, consider someone stealing small amounts over a year from a single store, a chain of stores or a group of stores with the same owners. The victims in these cases are the same entity.
That said, the trend in my area is for business owners to share data about accused shoplifters, help law enforcement with investigations, etc. I would not be surprised if they're all using a platform to do this these days.
>It makes a whole lot of sense, otherwise there is a loophole for unlimited stealing as Police/DAs do not want to waste time on misdemeanor theft.
Actually, this was already addressed (n.b., aggregation laws only exist in nine states, see GP's link here[1]) in most places by an increase in the severity of the crime charged for folks being convicted multiple times. cf. Alabama's law[0] as an example:
Enhanced Penalties for Theft Convictions in Alabama
Alabama law increases the penalties for habitual (repeat) felony offenders.
The length of the enhanced penalty depends on the number of past convictions
and the felony offense level for the current offense.
Second felony. For a second felony conviction, the sentence is raised one
level—for instance, a class B felony increases to a class A felony. This
penalty increase applies only to current offenses classified as class A, B,
or C felonies.
Third felony. A person with two prior felony offenses faces the following
minimum prison terms: 10 years for a class C felony, 15 years for a class B
felony, and 99 years for a class A felony.
Fourth felony. A fourth felony offense results in minimum prison terms of 15
years for a class C felony, 20 years for a class B felony, and life for a
class A felony.
Class D felony with prior convictions. When the current offense is a class D
felony and the person has two or more class A or B felony convictions or
three or more felonies in general, the penalty increases to a Class C felony.
(Ala. Code § 13A-5-9 (2024).)
Whatever information a "Loss Prevention" team has might be useful to a DA, but unless there's authentication and verified chain of custody of such evidence, the ability to fake such "video surveillance" makes such "evidence" not worth a damn.
That depends on relevant state laws. Perhaps Alabama wasn't the best example.
Regardless, as I said, organized shoplifting rings are mostly addressed by other laws (related to criminal conspiracy and other criminal enterprise laws) which do carry felony penalties.
If someone goes into Walmart three times a week and steals bread milk or eggs they should be charged with a felony and be sent to prison? Really? Shall we imprison those who sleep on the street too? How about speeders? Litterbugs? Jaywalkers? But we don't have enough prisons for that do we? Which leaves what? Summary execution?
As Anatole France[0] observed[1]:
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
You could always go to a Walmart and look up to see if they bothered to even wire the cameras or if the plug was literally dangling from the cameras over the entire store.
Happened at the expansion at the one I worked at and the shoplifters went ham for a while after they figured that out
Walmart is deep in surveillance tech. The store I worked at now has TV screens near the cash registers showing off their tracking (live camera feed with those tracking boxes or whatever drawn around people.) Once when I was using self check out, it thought I was trying to steal something and replayed video of the scan where it thought I scanned one time and bagged multiple.
> it thought I was trying to steal something and replayed video of the scan where it thought I scanned one time and bagged multiple.
Kroger had this too, which made every shopping trip take dramatically longer because the employees would already take 5-10 minutes to come over when they didn't have to reset every self-checkout every other item.
I refuse to shop anywhere that has them. We already have to deal with the constant "Please place item in the bagging area. Unexpected item in the bagging area.", why do we need extra aggravation when it's only going to slightly slow down a very specific class of shoplifter?
I would prefer they require face scanning vs. locking everything up. The police in my city don’t arrest people for shoplifting, or a range of petty crimes for that matter. If you don’t like face scanning no one makes you shop there.
When crime is unpunished and the police won’t do anything and the politicians don’t care, then businesses either have to adapt with new models or close
Police in my city are quite happy to lock people up for shoplifting. Random stores still lock up the majority of their inventory. I’m not sure how much that’s correlated.
Kind of a strange stance from someone with the name "monero-xmr". If scanning everyone's face for the purpose of going after petty crimes is justified, why shouldn't it be illegal to use monero for the purpose of going after other crimes?
I'm actually not anti-crypto (anti-cryptobro, maybe). I'm anti-surveillance-state and I find it very strange that someone wouldn't recognize the obvious similar argument that monero would be enabling unpunished crime.
Monero is money. It is a tool for freedom. I don’t like fraud. As a libertarian I am fine with private businesses doing whatever they need to in order to prevent their property being stolen. Free citizens don’t have to shop there. It’s especially egregious considering the businesses are forced to pay taxes, and police are part of the services they pay for, but the state refuses to help them.
You may also see stores revert to the 20th century model of having the mafia serve as private security. One reason they were so successful in some areas is that they were less corrupt and more responsive than the police.
The bad thing about mafia enforcement is you don’t get civil rights. Oh, and if the mob boss wants a favor then you’re going to have to oblige, even if it puts you at risk.
If police and DAs don’t take their jobs seriously, this is what they are inviting back into society.
That model also makes online shopping and delivery services easier to implement. I guess the issue is how labor intensive it is though. Instead of replacing cashiers with self checkout stands it goes in the opposite direction.
No, Costco is pretty much just a normal store with warehouse vibes. They mean where you hand a shopping list to an employee at the front and they get everything for you.
It has been proven and reproven that these claims of crime requiring store shutdowns were improperly put forward, without research, by a lobby. So much so that it was covered in mainstream media.
Your argument - esp the 'blue cities' bit given that the majority of metro(polis) cities in the US could be called blue (minus Miami, Houston, Dallas)- feels slanted.
OP your post was "if you dont like face scanning don't shop there" because shops need face scanning to stop crime.
However your next comment was that cops don't help. Here's the thing. They have a pretty terrible track record of help in any city including red ones. Have you called after having a fender bender on the highway in any state? Near a city, the answer is "no public property or third party damaged? exchange info yourself". Despite this they have been well-funded in the last few election cycles and this does not depend on the party elected.
How about when an iphone gets stolen, or all the people using airtags to track their luggage? The private sector also does a so/so to shit job of helping you. Apple will let you find your phone, but its up to you to go get it, or wipe and restart.
Tracking and storing all of my info and my face does not make the cops more effective at their jobs or prioritize this shop owner you know. Tracking and storing my info and face, doesn't help the shop keeper.
It does however, seem that all this tracking of my info results in my information getting leaked time and time and again. Meaning that I've gone for a shop and somehow the probability of something being stolen from me goes up
I’m friends with the manager of my neighborhood convenience store and he is extremely angry that he has shoplifting caught on tape, trespassed people, begged and pleaded with the police but they won’t do anything. I’m not sure if you actually know anyone operating a retail store but it’s pretty grim in the blue cities
The police rarely have ever been super responsive on shoplifting and basic trespass. I worked at a big box electronics store in the 90s, and we got looted when management did stupid shit like put hard drives on a retail shelf to save labor. The police rarely cared with some specific exception.
These cases are both minor and hard to prosecute.
The difference isn’t enforcement, it’s demand. The retail model as it stands today wasn’t designed for a world where there is a global market for everything. 95% people are honest, and most dishonest people are disorganized and easy to deter.
If you were to raid a drug store in 1986, your ability to unload stolen toothpaste and hair spray was pretty limited - maybe some mafias had a network of bodegas or independent stores.
Today, you have a major corporation that prides itself at having the “world‘s largest selection”. It’s also the worlds largest fence — Amazon.
The symptoms you're describing don't seem to match the proposed treatment.
Police: "You've caught them red-handed on camera, but we're very busy and we don't care. Or perhaps this is a place where we're deliberately doing-nothing as a revenge or pressure-tactic against local politicians."
Shopkeeper: "Ah, but this time I have the camera-footage and fancy biometrics of everyone in the store!"
Police: "Oh, well why didn't you say so? That completely changes things, we're always willing to help out a fellow biometrics fan."
> Police will not arrest if the DA won't prosecute.
Why not? If the police are frustrated that the DAs aren’t doing their job, I don’t think it helps the police any to choose to also not do their job. Especially since DAs are often elected, which means it’s easier to replace them if the police can show that they (the DA) are the bottleneck. But if the police don’t do their job first, then the police are the bottleneck.
Depends on the judges. If police cannot prove the crime in front of the judge, they wasted their time. With proper evidence it's not a waste of time anymore.
Progressive prosecutors don’t care. Judges let repeat offenders out with a wrist slap. Demoralizes police - what’s the point of all the effort if they are back out on the street tomorrow?
No, that's your experience. The narrative is that everything went to shit because the left is trying to create a society where the values you hold are despised and where the good people are blamed for everything while lazy people and criminals get to do whatever they want because of a misplaced sense of justice.
What is actually happening is more mundane.
It's political systems breaking because closed primaries and Gerrymandering mean that a significant population in a lot of places effectively get no political voice because the elections are held in the primaries, and the people can't vote in the opposing party's primary. Ossification results, or the candidate who appeals to the party's more ardent voters get elected, and we essentially lose the center as a political position.
We also have a homeless situation that isn't being addressed, because no one wants to do anything effective. So what happens is that the only thing that can be done is to arrest them, and house them in jail temporarily. This is expensive and doesn't actually fix anything.
So you have a bunch of frustrated citizens who feel like they have no control over their local policy and are sick of the petty crime, along with police who are handling it by not enforcing quality of life crimes in the hope people will blame the elected officials they don't like.
Your frustration is real, but the causes you are attributing for them are wrong.
Arresting criminals and throwing them in jail, like we did until about 10 years ago, would be a fantastic start! Really not a quantum leap in policy change
You need to read what people write and engage with the substance of it. Replying with a variation of the same talking point over and over is not a discussion.
My response is simple and straight forwards, I don’t tie myself into logical knots to turn what is simple and correct into a complicated inverse of reality
Except you didn't respond to anything I wrote. A 'simple and straightforward' response that does not address the content of the post you are responding to is not how this board operates.
From the guidelines:
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."
It’s just hard to engage when the comment doesn’t respond to the philosophical bedrock point: Stealing! Is! Wrong!
This is a bedrock foundational principle of Western civilization. I don’t take any quarter to any other opinion. This is the Ten Commandments. I don’t give an inch to anyone who tries to justify stealing whatsoever. While my HN persona is a bit grating my personal relationships are full of leftists, or I wouldn’t be able to be a community member in my deep blue city. I am tired of people defending theft and thieves. NO STEALING EVER PERIOD
We were talking about enforcement, not morality. I addressed enforcement completely in the comment you never bothered to read.
You are conflating different things, you are not reading or properly engaging, and you are letting emotions take over instead of thinking. Maybe you should work on these issues instead of blaming leftists.
Repeat shoplifters? Please that’s a thinly veiled excuse, the actual reason is so they can build more accurate analytical models to screw you over more.
I don't doubt that the biometrics analytics dystopia is coming, but shoplifting is a huge issue in some areas. Biometrics surveillance still sucks, but I'll believe it is about theft at this time.
Do facial recognition systems actually reduce or prevent shoplifting by any significant amount? Most shops in my non-us area will have a no approach policy, call the police and report it, but most offenders are presumably habitual.
I'm sure you can imagine some dark patterns.
Screens that show you products they want you to buy based on your patterns. Discounted offers tailored to you that are not really discounts.
Just because they haven't announced it doesn't mean they're not using it.
Honestly, I would just assume every grocery store has security cameras doing facial recognition to cross-reference and catch repeat shoplifters.
All those security cameras are there for a reason.