14 ms·

Walmart patents surveillance tool that can eavesdrop on workers

111 points by jrwan 8y ago

gcb0 8y ago
won't it infrige on amazon's surveillance of clients for their workerless shop full of microphones and cameras?
- Someone1234 8y ago
  Is this a reference to something specific?
  - stephengillie 8y ago
    Supposedly, Amazon employees watch the cameras in their stores, to know which Prime account to charge for which item. It sounds like a step between self-check and scan-bag-go, with a "mechanical Turk" to bridge the gap - turn Loss Prevention into legitimate checkout and a profit center.
    - russdpale 8y ago
      lol so THAT is why they are so coy about how the system actually works. My neice asked one of the employees and he was constantly giving dodgy answers to everyone. I figured they just didn't want any employee letting any proprietary knowledge out..
  - gcb0 8y ago
    yes, amazonGO. a shop where you enter, systems detect you via your phone or wireless card, you pick up what you want and leave. items show up on your credit card.
thisisit 8y ago
> ways that will help us further enhance how we serve customers Further enhance? Why?
- extralego 8y ago
  innovation and a better tomorrow
- musage 8y ago
  > Everybody knows by now, all businessmen are completely full of shit; just the worst kind of low-life, criminal, cocksuckers you could ever wanna' run into – a fuckin' piece of shit businessman. And the proof of it, the proof of it is, they don't even trust each other. They don't trust one another. When a business man sits down to negotiate a deal, the first thing he does is to automatically assume that the other guy is a complete lying prick who's trying to fuck him outta his money. So he's gotta do everything he can to fuck the other guy a little bit faster and a little bit harder. And he's gotta do it with a big smile on his face. You know that big, bullshit businessman smile? And if you're a customer – Whoah! – that's when you get the really big smile. Customer always gets that really big smile, as the businessman carefully positions himself directly behind the customer, and unzips his pants, and proceeds to service...the...account. 'I am servicing this account. This customer needs service.' Now you know what they mean. Now you know what they mean when they say, 'We specialize in customer service.' Whoever coined the phrase 'let the buyer beware' was probably bleeding from the asshole. That's business. -- George Carlin, "You Are All Diseased" (1999)
emptybits 8y ago
Not just "eavesdrop on workers". Also "eavesdrop on customers". The patent itself tells us: "the sound sensors can capture sounds resulting from guests talking while waiting in line at a terminal or any other sounds resulting from the presence of guest ... the sound sensors can capture audio of conversations between guests and an employee stationed at the terminal. The system can process the audio of the conversations to determine whether the employee stationed at the terminal is greeting guests." http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?docid=10020004&SectionNum=1&IDKey=5052A1653B0F http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?docid=10020004&SectionNum=1&IDK...
- 394549 8y ago
  I wonder how they'd make the required notifications to make this legal in one-party consent states. I don't see how this could fly at all in a two-party consent state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws#Unite...
  - CamTin 8y ago
    If they're not actually recording the audio (just a boolean of whether or not the cashier said "did you find everything you needed?"), they might not need anyone's consent.
    - al3xnull 8y ago
      Which would require the somehow the audio is "intercepted" to analyze that the greeting was said. Two-party consent state include that action. Storage is another thing, no?
  - jonnybgood 8y ago
    They don’t need consent. A store is semi-public space. There is no expectation of privacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_space
  - Alupis 8y ago
    From what I recall, even in two-party states, simply informing the other party is implicit consent, even if they say they do not consent to being recorded. The only way to reject consent is to hang up the phone, ending the conversation. (one-party state means I know I'm recording the conversation, so it's legal - I'm not obligated to inform the other party). In stores, you'll often see a sign somewhere near the entrance that says something like "Smile, you're on camera!", along with a CCTV showing the feed - which is enough to implicitly consent recording when on the premises. If you don't consent, you must leave the store. So, I imagine a simple sign telling customers both audio and video surveillance is being conducted will be sufficient.
loa-in-backup 8y ago
> "[change relations to those] where employees view the employer not as benevolent, but as dictators." It was never the former, but really can become the latter.
fallingfrog 8y ago
The realist in me knows that the people working at Wal Mart will accept this, because in the end they have no choice. But when you continue to squeeze people and control them more and more closely, eventually they wake up and realize who has the real power. Eventually the guillotine rolls out, and everything starts over.. Can we not do this this time?
- citilife 8y ago
  The scary part is.. this time we have a much higher amount of control. Unless people are unwilling to not use that knowledge / power, then we are going to be less effective when the guillotine rolls out this time... That being said, the initial Russian transition of power in WWI, where the czar stepped down was without (minimal) violence.[1] This is before the October revolution (which was violent). [1] https://www.english-online.at/history/russian-revolution/russian-revolution-and-civil-war.htm https://www.english-online.at/history/russian-revolution/rus...
- cryoshon 8y ago
  this isn't a toe-in-the door surveillance maneuver to test the waters for people accepting it. this is scraping the barrel to get whatever last dregs of control remain. we can choose not to roll out the guillotines this time. but then we'd just get violated for longer.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > because in the end they have no choice Or don’t care.
- dfxm12 8y ago
  because in the end they have no choice With so few people unemployed, they have as much a choice now as they almost ever will. Of course, thanks to Walmart's anti-union tactics, you won't see an organized workforce telling Walmart "No!"
trophycase 8y ago
This has got to stop people. I'm serious. We need to take collective action and do something before this stuff gets out of hand. Anyone got some resources on getting involved?
- thetruepickle5 8y ago
  Get a copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook, conveniently available at Amazon :)
  - danesparza 8y ago
    The author now sees the premise to his own book as 'flawed': https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/19/anarchist-cookbook-author-william-powell-out-of-print https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/19/anarch...
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- phyzome 8y ago
  Talk with your friends about unions.
  - cafard 8y ago
    Talk with UFCW about its efforts to organize Walmart. The idea did occur to them some time ago. If it were at all easy, it would be done by now.
    - phyzome 8y ago
      Oh yeah, I'm not suggesting it would be easy to organize Walmart! But if people start pushing back against the anti-union propaganda by discussing it as a viable option in various areas, normalizing it again, that would be a way to help.
salawat 8y ago
...How much further are we going to let this sort of thing evolve? This is classic Industrialist overreach. Taft-Hartley be damned. Enough is enough. Corporate America needs a wake-up call, and I think the unions may need to brush off the dust and get back in the game. It's one thing to play with hypotheticals, but Corporations are starting to leverage capital advantaged positions in order to dictate what values the average American can expect in their lifetime. It's a slow, insidious process that will happen over several generations, and if a stand isn't made against this sort of thing, it qualifies as implicit acceptance of the status quo. If industry is going to try to build itself into a position where it can micromanage every iota of the working day out of a perceived superior position brought by cornering the "market" on economic power "capital", then labor needs to be willing to say "have fun with that, we'll find another way to survive." I get this may come across as hyperbolic rhetoric, but it is absolutely INSANE that people are thinking about IMPLEMENTING these sorts of things.
- notadoc 8y ago
  > ...How much further are we going to let this sort of thing evolve? If you have read any sci-fi from the early/mid 20th century, you already know the answer to that.
  - squarefoot 8y ago
    +1. I spent my youth starting at 15 reading sci-fi books from the 50s onward, and the number of dystopian futures depicted as pure fantasy then but not that far from becoming reality now is disturbing. I'd dare to say that reading that genre is likely the best possible way to educate kids minds to see current events coming years before they actually do.
- sillysaurus3 8y ago
  For any given website, if you can log in and chat with an employee, the conversation is logged. This is normal. If you call a corporation and chat with them, the conversation is recorded and used for quality purposes. This is normal. If you grab some groceries and ask to return one of the items you thought was on sale but wasn't, and this fact is noted by an audio recording system, suddenly this isn't normal. I don't have feelings about this either way, but it's interesting to contrast the situations.
pasbesoin 8y ago
As far as I'm concerned, I'm hired to do a job. Not be a (coerced) actor to every last dimension of my expression. That's a much harder job. And if they insist on that, they can damned well pay -- a lot more -- for it. And that's where the group of the impacted have to and, as far as I'm concerned, have the right to come together and say so. Meantime, Walmart, as a tax payer, I'm tired of paying for your b-llshit (public benefits to full-time or should-be-full-time employees, ridiculous tax breaks (that go to the top, not the bottom), and all the rest).
AstralStorm 8y ago
It will probably be time to figure out right doodads to break all this surveillance, permanently. As a customer, to protest the practice.
madamelic 8y ago
I have always been super supportive of automation and I think it is a net-positive. But today I had a weird experience. You know those automated ordering things at fast food places, I used one for the first time today. It was exciting and fun at first (don't judge me), but then I looked up and realized no one was at the register and no one was speaking. The workers were simply packing bags and pressing buttons. It was a cold transaction between two humans, the human workers could've been robots and accomplished the same thing. It makes me a little worried and sad that automation will cause our lives to be completely sterile and cold. No human interaction, just pressing buttons and staring blankly at each other.
- sandworm101 8y ago
  You skirt around the probably motivation behind those machines. It isn't about speeding the order process, it is about removing language from the equation. At some basic level, the person taking the order must have language in common with the person placing the order. Throw a machine into the mix and you no longer need that commonalty. The person behind the counter no longer needs to speak the same language as the customer. Every time they remove such requirements they make labor that little bit easier to replace. I'll admit to occasionally hitting the drive through on my way to work. It is odd to say, but that brief interaction through the window is the one time I'll talk to a stranger all day. (I work behind guarded doors and security barriers.) I don't want that person replaced by a machine.
- sannee 8y ago
  As someone with mild social anxiety, I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. I hate having to talk with a stranger just in order not to starve to death.
diogenescynic 8y ago
A union busting patent? Sickening. How is this allowed? I thought eavesdropping/recording an unknown wasn't allowed in many states.

111 points by jrwan 8y ago

gcb0 8y ago

won't it infrige on amazon's surveillance of clients for their workerless shop full of microphones and cameras?

Someone1234 8y ago
Is this a reference to something specific?
- stephengillie 8y ago
  Supposedly, Amazon employees watch the cameras in their stores, to know which Prime account to charge for which item. It sounds like a step between self-check and scan-bag-go, with a "mechanical Turk" to bridge the gap - turn Loss Prevention into legitimate checkout and a profit center.
  - russdpale 8y ago
    lol so THAT is why they are so coy about how the system actually works. My neice asked one of the employees and he was constantly giving dodgy answers to everyone. I figured they just didn't want any employee letting any proprietary knowledge out..
- gcb0 8y ago
  yes, amazonGO. a shop where you enter, systems detect you via your phone or wireless card, you pick up what you want and leave. items show up on your credit card.

thisisit 8y ago

> ways that will help us further enhance how we serve customers Further enhance? Why?

extralego 8y ago
innovation and a better tomorrow
musage 8y ago
> Everybody knows by now, all businessmen are completely full of shit; just the worst kind of low-life, criminal, cocksuckers you could ever wanna' run into – a fuckin' piece of shit businessman. And the proof of it, the proof of it is, they don't even trust each other. They don't trust one another. When a business man sits down to negotiate a deal, the first thing he does is to automatically assume that the other guy is a complete lying prick who's trying to fuck him outta his money. So he's gotta do everything he can to fuck the other guy a little bit faster and a little bit harder. And he's gotta do it with a big smile on his face. You know that big, bullshit businessman smile? And if you're a customer – Whoah! – that's when you get the really big smile. Customer always gets that really big smile, as the businessman carefully positions himself directly behind the customer, and unzips his pants, and proceeds to service...the...account. 'I am servicing this account. This customer needs service.' Now you know what they mean. Now you know what they mean when they say, 'We specialize in customer service.' Whoever coined the phrase 'let the buyer beware' was probably bleeding from the asshole. That's business. -- George Carlin, "You Are All Diseased" (1999)

emptybits 8y ago

Not just "eavesdrop on workers". Also "eavesdrop on customers". The patent itself tells us: "the sound sensors can capture sounds resulting from guests talking while waiting in line at a terminal or any other sounds resulting from the presence of guest ... the sound sensors can capture audio of conversations between guests and an employee stationed at the terminal. The system can process the audio of the conversations to determine whether the employee stationed at the terminal is greeting guests." http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?docid=10020004&SectionNum=1&IDKey=5052A1653B0F http://pdfpiw.uspto.gov/.piw?docid=10020004&SectionNum=1&IDK...

394549 8y ago
I wonder how they'd make the required notifications to make this legal in one-party consent states. I don't see how this could fly at all in a two-party consent state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws#Unite...
- CamTin 8y ago
  If they're not actually recording the audio (just a boolean of whether or not the cashier said "did you find everything you needed?"), they might not need anyone's consent.
  - al3xnull 8y ago
    Which would require the somehow the audio is "intercepted" to analyze that the greeting was said. Two-party consent state include that action. Storage is another thing, no?
- jonnybgood 8y ago
  They don’t need consent. A store is semi-public space. There is no expectation of privacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_space
- Alupis 8y ago
  From what I recall, even in two-party states, simply informing the other party is implicit consent, even if they say they do not consent to being recorded. The only way to reject consent is to hang up the phone, ending the conversation. (one-party state means I know I'm recording the conversation, so it's legal - I'm not obligated to inform the other party). In stores, you'll often see a sign somewhere near the entrance that says something like "Smile, you're on camera!", along with a CCTV showing the feed - which is enough to implicitly consent recording when on the premises. If you don't consent, you must leave the store. So, I imagine a simple sign telling customers both audio and video surveillance is being conducted will be sufficient.

loa-in-backup 8y ago

> "[change relations to those] where employees view the employer not as benevolent, but as dictators." It was never the former, but really can become the latter.

fallingfrog 8y ago

The realist in me knows that the people working at Wal Mart will accept this, because in the end they have no choice. But when you continue to squeeze people and control them more and more closely, eventually they wake up and realize who has the real power. Eventually the guillotine rolls out, and everything starts over.. Can we not do this this time?

citilife 8y ago
The scary part is.. this time we have a much higher amount of control. Unless people are unwilling to not use that knowledge / power, then we are going to be less effective when the guillotine rolls out this time... That being said, the initial Russian transition of power in WWI, where the czar stepped down was without (minimal) violence.[1] This is before the October revolution (which was violent). [1] https://www.english-online.at/history/russian-revolution/russian-revolution-and-civil-war.htm https://www.english-online.at/history/russian-revolution/rus...
cryoshon 8y ago
this isn't a toe-in-the door surveillance maneuver to test the waters for people accepting it. this is scraping the barrel to get whatever last dregs of control remain. we can choose not to roll out the guillotines this time. but then we'd just get violated for longer.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> because in the end they have no choice Or don’t care.
dfxm12 8y ago
because in the end they have no choice With so few people unemployed, they have as much a choice now as they almost ever will. Of course, thanks to Walmart's anti-union tactics, you won't see an organized workforce telling Walmart "No!"

trophycase 8y ago

This has got to stop people. I'm serious. We need to take collective action and do something before this stuff gets out of hand. Anyone got some resources on getting involved?

thetruepickle5 8y ago
Get a copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook, conveniently available at Amazon :)
- danesparza 8y ago
  The author now sees the premise to his own book as 'flawed': https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/19/anarchist-cookbook-author-william-powell-out-of-print https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/19/anarch...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
phyzome 8y ago
Talk with your friends about unions.
- cafard 8y ago
  Talk with UFCW about its efforts to organize Walmart. The idea did occur to them some time ago. If it were at all easy, it would be done by now.
  - phyzome 8y ago
    Oh yeah, I'm not suggesting it would be easy to organize Walmart! But if people start pushing back against the anti-union propaganda by discussing it as a viable option in various areas, normalizing it again, that would be a way to help.

salawat 8y ago

...How much further are we going to let this sort of thing evolve? This is classic Industrialist overreach. Taft-Hartley be damned. Enough is enough. Corporate America needs a wake-up call, and I think the unions may need to brush off the dust and get back in the game. It's one thing to play with hypotheticals, but Corporations are starting to leverage capital advantaged positions in order to dictate what values the average American can expect in their lifetime. It's a slow, insidious process that will happen over several generations, and if a stand isn't made against this sort of thing, it qualifies as implicit acceptance of the status quo. If industry is going to try to build itself into a position where it can micromanage every iota of the working day out of a perceived superior position brought by cornering the "market" on economic power "capital", then labor needs to be willing to say "have fun with that, we'll find another way to survive." I get this may come across as hyperbolic rhetoric, but it is absolutely INSANE that people are thinking about IMPLEMENTING these sorts of things.

notadoc 8y ago
> ...How much further are we going to let this sort of thing evolve? If you have read any sci-fi from the early/mid 20th century, you already know the answer to that.
- squarefoot 8y ago
  +1. I spent my youth starting at 15 reading sci-fi books from the 50s onward, and the number of dystopian futures depicted as pure fantasy then but not that far from becoming reality now is disturbing. I'd dare to say that reading that genre is likely the best possible way to educate kids minds to see current events coming years before they actually do.
sillysaurus3 8y ago
For any given website, if you can log in and chat with an employee, the conversation is logged. This is normal. If you call a corporation and chat with them, the conversation is recorded and used for quality purposes. This is normal. If you grab some groceries and ask to return one of the items you thought was on sale but wasn't, and this fact is noted by an audio recording system, suddenly this isn't normal. I don't have feelings about this either way, but it's interesting to contrast the situations.

pasbesoin 8y ago

As far as I'm concerned, I'm hired to do a job. Not be a (coerced) actor to every last dimension of my expression. That's a much harder job. And if they insist on that, they can damned well pay -- a lot more -- for it. And that's where the group of the impacted have to and, as far as I'm concerned, have the right to come together and say so. Meantime, Walmart, as a tax payer, I'm tired of paying for your b-llshit (public benefits to full-time or should-be-full-time employees, ridiculous tax breaks (that go to the top, not the bottom), and all the rest).

AstralStorm 8y ago

It will probably be time to figure out right doodads to break all this surveillance, permanently. As a customer, to protest the practice.

madamelic 8y ago

I have always been super supportive of automation and I think it is a net-positive. But today I had a weird experience. You know those automated ordering things at fast food places, I used one for the first time today. It was exciting and fun at first (don't judge me), but then I looked up and realized no one was at the register and no one was speaking. The workers were simply packing bags and pressing buttons. It was a cold transaction between two humans, the human workers could've been robots and accomplished the same thing. It makes me a little worried and sad that automation will cause our lives to be completely sterile and cold. No human interaction, just pressing buttons and staring blankly at each other.

sandworm101 8y ago
You skirt around the probably motivation behind those machines. It isn't about speeding the order process, it is about removing language from the equation. At some basic level, the person taking the order must have language in common with the person placing the order. Throw a machine into the mix and you no longer need that commonalty. The person behind the counter no longer needs to speak the same language as the customer. Every time they remove such requirements they make labor that little bit easier to replace. I'll admit to occasionally hitting the drive through on my way to work. It is odd to say, but that brief interaction through the window is the one time I'll talk to a stranger all day. (I work behind guarded doors and security barriers.) I don't want that person replaced by a machine.
sannee 8y ago
As someone with mild social anxiety, I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. I hate having to talk with a stranger just in order not to starve to death.

diogenescynic 8y ago

A union busting patent? Sickening. How is this allowed? I thought eavesdropping/recording an unknown wasn't allowed in many states.