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> Amazon spokesperson Alisa Carroll said a malfunction caused the camera to take photos. The machine, provided by the vending supplier Canteen, features a touch

> Amazon spokesperson Alisa Carroll said a malfunction caused the camera to take photos. The machine, provided by the vending supplier Canteen, features a touch screen and uses a camera for people to purchase coffee with a card, she said. But Carroll added that Amazon offers the coffee to employees free of charge and has no practical use for the camera. Why is a camera involved in purchasing coffee with a card? Genuine question. Was there an issue of people stealing coffee cards, so they used facial-ID matching? If so that seems like an expensive and authoritarian solution to a minor problem, and it doesn't make sense that the machine would do this if Amazon isn't using the cards. And it doesn't fully explain this: > An employee at the DMP1 Amazon Delivery Station was getting coffee on February 9 when he saw a button on the coffee vending machine’s touch screen that read “gallery.”....The employee pushed the button and came across around half a dozen random photos of the breakroom, according to Canaday. If the photos were close-ups of employees making coffee then I would buy the explanation that this was a feature Amazon forgot to disable. But if they are truly "random photos of the breakroom" then this explanation doesn't make sense to me.

michaelmior 3y ago
Also, even if a camera is involved in purchasing a coffee with a card, why is there a gallery of these pictures?
- unglaublich 3y ago
  Maybe because it's some messy custom Android setup that was put together by an intern in 3 months and it piggybacks on the existing camera functionality.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - mistermegabyte 3y ago
    This is the answer. My work tablets are android based and taking pictures isn't supposed to be part of the workflow, but sometimes by using random button presses, you can accidentially bring up the camera/gallery (its supposed to be locked out, but our IT dept didn't do a good job of totally locking it out).
    - jstarfish 3y ago
      The easiest way to do it is from the lock screen, if/when it's enabled. My own gallery is full of black pictures taken of the inside of my pocket.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
gruez 3y ago
>Why is a camera involved in purchasing coffee with a card? to scan the QR/bar code that's on the card
- NewJazz 3y ago
  If so it should be faced at the ground if that were the case. But that would require privacy considerations by engineers who design cameras into their hardware :/
  - nicklecompte 3y ago
    It makes a ton of sense when you consider that it's cheaper to buy a freight train full of cheap Android tablets with front-facing cameras than it is to engineer a custom device with a camera that faces downwards.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      This is exactly it - the number of "high-end" devices that have things like that inside would boggle the mind. Perhaps the most famous: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/21/16339122/ecg-powered-game-boy-advance https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/21/16339122/e...
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    There is no expectation of privacy of your face when engaging in any kind of commercial transaction. To the contrary, it's an essential measure for helping to track down theft and fraud. Every self-checkout takes a photo of your face. Every ATM. And basically every store where you check out with a cashier has security cameras capturing your face from angles. So there is no reason why engineers would want to angle the camera downwards.
    - NewJazz 3y ago
      [flagged]
faet 3y ago
> Why is a camera involved in purchasing coffee with a card? Many times people who steal credit cards will try to make small purchases to validate cards. Since there is no human interaction someone who has stolen ~10 cards could try each one by buying a $1-2 coffee and seeing which ones work. The machine takes photos which could then be turned over if/when the card holder reports fraud.
- s_dev 3y ago
  So they enter a secure facility with their already vetted credentials and CCTV in operation to try out stolen credit cards? Or they could do those same validation tests at home on a dodgy website. Do you think using stolen credit cards is a big problem in Amazon warehouses, because what I think is this isn't a bug but a feature to detect who is working and who is slacking.
  - blackoil 3y ago
    From parent comment > uses a camera for people to purchase coffee with a card, she said. But Carroll added that Amazon offers the coffee to employees free of charge and has no practical use for the camera.
    - s_dev 3y ago
      I'm not sure why you quoted that because there is a camera in operation and whether Amazon 'has a practical' purpose for it or not is irrelevant here. Would be like finding a camera in a girls locker room and then saying 'we have no need for that'. Like what the hell is doing there is the real question and I suspect it does have a practical purpose for Amazon.
  - treflop 3y ago
    Amazon didn’t make the coffee machine. That’s like I saying I approved of my Samsung fridge shitting the bed. No, Samsung did that. I just bought it.
ethbr1 3y ago
> Why is a camera involved in purchasing coffee with a card? Genuine question. Was there an issue of people stealing coffee cards, so they used facial-ID matching? There's huge loss/fraud prevention value in creating visual audit trails. You don't need to do facial ID matching to recognize recurring theft. You just need a historical photo to correlate who used a card (that you subsequently might learn was a fraudulent charge). Same way CCTV cameras are used in retail.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  > huge loss/fraud prevention value in a company owned cafeteria, for ordinary pay-per-purchase coffee ? where is the "loss" ? better question - is management addicted to spying here?
  - taeric 3y ago
    I think the easy read is that the machine is a commercial machine that can be deployed in places where the functionality is needed. That is, this is not a custom machine for this location. (The story states that the coffee is free in this location.)
    - 1024core 3y ago
      Occam's Razor.
  - freejazz 3y ago
    >in a company owned cafeteria, for ordinary pay-per-purchase coffee ? Did you read the thread you are responding to? They said they don't use the camera for this exact reason.
  - petsfed 3y ago
    I've worked at several places that had self-serve snack bins that you were expected to pay for, but the machine was just a pay kiosk, not a vending machine. Typically, the way these operations work is that either the employer contracts out the snack bin to a vendor, or the employer buys the snacks themselves, then charges the employees for them. In either case, if the expectation is to pay for the snacks, and you don't, that's theft. I have complicated opinions about whether or not an employer should charge their own employees for break-room snacks, but once an employer decides that they should charge for the snacks, then the loss is clear when a snack is taken without paying.
treflop 3y ago
If a random employee could look at the gallery, the coffee machine probably was not locked down Whoever installed the coffee machine probably just plugged it in and filled it with beans. Another employee might have changed the settings. I know if I came across an unlocked admin interface, I would fuck with it. I press all buttons
gorkish 3y ago
> Why is a camera involved in purchasing coffee with a card? Genuine question. The sheer number of people in here espousing great volumes of text to explain the ulterior motives of a shitty OEM android control panel on a vending machine crashing out of kiosk mode is utterly unbelievable.
- metabagel 3y ago
  There's probably a nicer way to say this.
  - gorkish 3y ago
    On the other hand, maybe a broken vending machine wouldn't be a national talking point if even one person in this entire chain of events had simply accepted that the machine was malfunctioning and might not actually be an instrument of the surveillance state.
    - hobolobo 3y ago
      Amazon is well known for surveilling its staff. Why act surprised that staff think the worst when they find another piece of surveillance gear in the breakroom?
    - jrflowers 3y ago
      This is a good point. Many are in glass houses on this issue as who amongst us can say that they have bought a vending machine that doesn’t come with a built in camera
  - lol768 3y ago
    Don't necessarily disagree, but also there's a lot of conspiracy theorist nonsense here for something that could well simply be explained away by "Cheap Android off-the-shelf tablet used as a UI for something". It would've been useful to see some screenshots/pictures of the UI before writing a scare-mongering article about it. gorkish's comment does at least bring things back down to earth.
TurkishPoptart 3y ago
The best solution may be low-tech: duct tape!
hammock 3y ago
>Why is a camera involved in purchasing coffee with a card? Genuine question. Check the POS card pads at your local Starbucks, drug store, grocery store, etc. ALL of the new ones have cameras on them now (not just the self-checkout kiosks), and it's reasonable to assume they are snapping pics of everyone to assist with fraud investigations. Sometimes I carry around little stickers with me and cover the cameras up.
jabroni_salad 3y ago
My former workplace had a Canteen kiosk and the camera in question was a webcam at the top center of the screen. It showed your video during the checkout process. Bonus item: Canteen had to mail me a check for $30 after losing a class action lawsuit. You could register a fingerprint to access your account with, but we were in Illinois and they did not collect a biometrics waiver during enrollment.

michaelmior 3y ago

Also, even if a camera is involved in purchasing a coffee with a card, why is there a gallery of these pictures?

unglaublich 3y ago
Maybe because it's some messy custom Android setup that was put together by an intern in 3 months and it piggybacks on the existing camera functionality.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- mistermegabyte 3y ago
  This is the answer. My work tablets are android based and taking pictures isn't supposed to be part of the workflow, but sometimes by using random button presses, you can accidentially bring up the camera/gallery (its supposed to be locked out, but our IT dept didn't do a good job of totally locking it out).
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    The easiest way to do it is from the lock screen, if/when it's enabled. My own gallery is full of black pictures taken of the inside of my pocket.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

gruez 3y ago

>Why is a camera involved in purchasing coffee with a card? to scan the QR/bar code that's on the card

NewJazz 3y ago
If so it should be faced at the ground if that were the case. But that would require privacy considerations by engineers who design cameras into their hardware :/
- nicklecompte 3y ago
  It makes a ton of sense when you consider that it's cheaper to buy a freight train full of cheap Android tablets with front-facing cameras than it is to engineer a custom device with a camera that faces downwards.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    This is exactly it - the number of "high-end" devices that have things like that inside would boggle the mind. Perhaps the most famous: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/21/16339122/ecg-powered-game-boy-advance https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/21/16339122/e...
- crazygringo 3y ago
  There is no expectation of privacy of your face when engaging in any kind of commercial transaction. To the contrary, it's an essential measure for helping to track down theft and fraud. Every self-checkout takes a photo of your face. Every ATM. And basically every store where you check out with a cashier has security cameras capturing your face from angles. So there is no reason why engineers would want to angle the camera downwards.
  - NewJazz 3y ago
    [flagged]

faet 3y ago

> Why is a camera involved in purchasing coffee with a card? Many times people who steal credit cards will try to make small purchases to validate cards. Since there is no human interaction someone who has stolen ~10 cards could try each one by buying a $1-2 coffee and seeing which ones work. The machine takes photos which could then be turned over if/when the card holder reports fraud.

s_dev 3y ago
So they enter a secure facility with their already vetted credentials and CCTV in operation to try out stolen credit cards? Or they could do those same validation tests at home on a dodgy website. Do you think using stolen credit cards is a big problem in Amazon warehouses, because what I think is this isn't a bug but a feature to detect who is working and who is slacking.
- blackoil 3y ago
  From parent comment > uses a camera for people to purchase coffee with a card, she said. But Carroll added that Amazon offers the coffee to employees free of charge and has no practical use for the camera.
  - s_dev 3y ago
    I'm not sure why you quoted that because there is a camera in operation and whether Amazon 'has a practical' purpose for it or not is irrelevant here. Would be like finding a camera in a girls locker room and then saying 'we have no need for that'. Like what the hell is doing there is the real question and I suspect it does have a practical purpose for Amazon.
- treflop 3y ago
  Amazon didn’t make the coffee machine. That’s like I saying I approved of my Samsung fridge shitting the bed. No, Samsung did that. I just bought it.

ethbr1 3y ago

> Why is a camera involved in purchasing coffee with a card? Genuine question. Was there an issue of people stealing coffee cards, so they used facial-ID matching? There's huge loss/fraud prevention value in creating visual audit trails. You don't need to do facial ID matching to recognize recurring theft. You just need a historical photo to correlate who used a card (that you subsequently might learn was a fraudulent charge). Same way CCTV cameras are used in retail.

mistrial9 3y ago
> huge loss/fraud prevention value in a company owned cafeteria, for ordinary pay-per-purchase coffee ? where is the "loss" ? better question - is management addicted to spying here?
- taeric 3y ago
  I think the easy read is that the machine is a commercial machine that can be deployed in places where the functionality is needed. That is, this is not a custom machine for this location. (The story states that the coffee is free in this location.)
  - 1024core 3y ago
    Occam's Razor.
- freejazz 3y ago
  >in a company owned cafeteria, for ordinary pay-per-purchase coffee ? Did you read the thread you are responding to? They said they don't use the camera for this exact reason.
- petsfed 3y ago
  I've worked at several places that had self-serve snack bins that you were expected to pay for, but the machine was just a pay kiosk, not a vending machine. Typically, the way these operations work is that either the employer contracts out the snack bin to a vendor, or the employer buys the snacks themselves, then charges the employees for them. In either case, if the expectation is to pay for the snacks, and you don't, that's theft. I have complicated opinions about whether or not an employer should charge their own employees for break-room snacks, but once an employer decides that they should charge for the snacks, then the loss is clear when a snack is taken without paying.

treflop 3y ago

If a random employee could look at the gallery, the coffee machine probably was not locked down Whoever installed the coffee machine probably just plugged it in and filled it with beans. Another employee might have changed the settings. I know if I came across an unlocked admin interface, I would fuck with it. I press all buttons

gorkish 3y ago

> Why is a camera involved in purchasing coffee with a card? Genuine question. The sheer number of people in here espousing great volumes of text to explain the ulterior motives of a shitty OEM android control panel on a vending machine crashing out of kiosk mode is utterly unbelievable.

metabagel 3y ago
There's probably a nicer way to say this.
- gorkish 3y ago
  On the other hand, maybe a broken vending machine wouldn't be a national talking point if even one person in this entire chain of events had simply accepted that the machine was malfunctioning and might not actually be an instrument of the surveillance state.
  - hobolobo 3y ago
    Amazon is well known for surveilling its staff. Why act surprised that staff think the worst when they find another piece of surveillance gear in the breakroom?
  - jrflowers 3y ago
    This is a good point. Many are in glass houses on this issue as who amongst us can say that they have bought a vending machine that doesn’t come with a built in camera
- lol768 3y ago
  Don't necessarily disagree, but also there's a lot of conspiracy theorist nonsense here for something that could well simply be explained away by "Cheap Android off-the-shelf tablet used as a UI for something". It would've been useful to see some screenshots/pictures of the UI before writing a scare-mongering article about it. gorkish's comment does at least bring things back down to earth.

TurkishPoptart 3y ago

The best solution may be low-tech: duct tape!

hammock 3y ago

>Why is a camera involved in purchasing coffee with a card? Genuine question. Check the POS card pads at your local Starbucks, drug store, grocery store, etc. ALL of the new ones have cameras on them now (not just the self-checkout kiosks), and it's reasonable to assume they are snapping pics of everyone to assist with fraud investigations. Sometimes I carry around little stickers with me and cover the cameras up.

jabroni_salad 3y ago

My former workplace had a Canteen kiosk and the camera in question was a webcam at the top center of the screen. It showed your video during the checkout process. Bonus item: Canteen had to mail me a check for $30 after losing a class action lawsuit. You could register a fingerprint to access your account with, but we were in Illinois and they did not collect a biometrics waiver during enrollment.