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Walmart employees now wearing body cameras
- oldpersonintx 2y ago[dead]
- Insanity 2y agoKinda insane that this is necessary in some places. I am not super comfortable with these changes of having cameras everywhere, but I am sure some grocery store employees have to deal with a lot of “shady” customers.
- Overtonwindow 2y agoCameras have been everywhere for quite some time. Every time you use self check out, at the grocery store or even the post office, a camera is watching you. As you walk around stores, cameras are following and recording your movements. ATM machines, traffic cameras, we are being photographed constantly.
- mrweasel 2y agoIt's doesn't seem to be necessary. If they have just 200 violent incidents then that's impressively low, 0.0125% chance of you as a Walmart employee to have a violent encounter at work per year. Verbal conflicts can be unpleasant as well obviously, and the cameras can help identify those customers as well. I'm not entirely sure that the cameras well work as a deterrent though, they normal don't in other cases. A frustrated or angry customer isn't going to see the camera an change their behavior. So you still need to have support framework in place for the employees who have these encounters. The cameras are only there to be able to identify customers, but I'm not really sure what they would want to do with that information.
- PKop 2y agoIf they put criminals in jail they wouldn't have to have a surveillance state like this.
- daelon 2y agoHow does that follow?
- PKop 2y agoYou can't steal from retail stores when you're in prison.
- daelon 2y agoWhat makes you think that's related to the surveillance state in any way?
- unethical_ban 2y agoThe person you're responding to has a history of not responding thoroughly and specifically to the claims made by others in a conversation. Alternatively, they're often flat-out wrong.
- PKop 2y agoNot true, I just disagree with you. The events in Germany are just the most recent example of my position (and that of the winning candidate and voters in the most recent US election) on opposing immigration and supporting remigration and deportation being the correct and moral position, as opposed to the left wing position of mass immigration and open borders in western countries being immoral.
- lovich 2y agoHe doesn’t like these people and would like to subject them incarceration and slavery
- pjc50 2y agoThe US is one of the top jailers of the world. I suspect that's actually due to an extremely bad false positive rate on the police and court system; jailing a lot of non-violent people for petty incidents and failing to address more serious crimes if they're even slightly hard to investigate.
- xyst 2y ago9/11 changed the game. Fear is a powerful motivator. Cameras on: - public roadways, highways - streets (nyc, london) - businesses - private cars - public transportation - interiors of cars - perimeter of residential homes - interiors of homes - civilian law enforcement agencies equipped with body cams - and of course the audio, video, GPS capable devices a majority of the world carries - now adding to the list is private businesses equipping employees with body cams The “selfie” and social media made us accustomed to posting personal information online as well. The surveillance state is already here and people are barely waking up to this shit.
- MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago> 9/11 changed the game It did, but not as much as cheap technology did, at least when we're talking about cameras everywhere.
- eadmund 2y ago> 9/11 changed the game. Almost a quarter century later, I remain amazed that Americans put up with locks the government has the key to (on our luggage). As someone who grew up in the Cold War, that’s the sort of thing we would have expected from the Soviets. IIRC, it was during Nixon’s term that things started to go awry. I believe it was his administration who responded to security incidents on æroplanes with the un-American approaching of disarming passengers.
- potato3732842 2y ago>Almost a quarter century later, I remain amazed that Americans put up with locks the government has the key to (on our luggage). As someone who grew up in the Cold War, that’s the sort of thing we would have expected from the Soviets. Remember, Americans reacted to the drugs and crime of the 80s and 90s by throwing more government invasion of privacy and erosion of due process at that problem too.
- PittleyDunkin 2y agoFear is also highly irrational. We have a 9/11 in terms of auto deaths about every month. We watch millions die from a preventable pandemic just to keep the economy going. Neither of these things seems to provoke much desire from the state to protect americans. I don't think it's just fear, either. I remember the bloodlust and feigned victimhood that spilled out after 9/11 and I never want to live through that again. We got permission to behave in the worst way possible and so much of our culture never recovered from that. We now live under a more despotic government than we ever accused the soviets of. "patriotism" can kiss my ass
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago> but I am sure some grocery store employees have to deal with a lot of “shady” customers. I wouldn't just worry about the customers—the lady who recently died in a walk-in oven (at a walmart!) was unlikely to have been locked in by a customer.
- jccalhoun 2y agoWe are being told it is necessary. We don't know that it actually is.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoThis is disturbing. It's bad enough that one might have to stumble through the cone of some surveillance camera while living life, but even should you have to stay there for several minutes completing an errand, you will have another moment of privacy as soon as you walk away. Even while working a shift at Walmart such will be true. But now, for those who work there, they're in the fishbowl permanently.
- HPsquared 2y agoPrivacy implications depend on how long they retain the footage, and how it's stored in general.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoI do not agree that privacy works this way. For me, it's not invaded once the peeping Tom shows up, it was degraded when there was opportunity for him to peek. Footage might be destroyed, but one can never be certain that there aren't copies elsewhere. It may seem secure, but how can I be certain that there won't be some future exploit that exposes it to even more people (never mind those who already have access). I think the principle here is that my privacy exists not because you and others promise not to invade it, but only when I can secure you from doing so. Once the cameras are policy, no one who works there will be able to do that for themselves.
- newsclues 2y agoLet’s fix the problems causing the devolution to a low trust society instead of just layering on cameras and ubiquitous surveillance. Maybe the people making grocery store clerks feel afraid at work shouldn’t be free to walk around causing trauma. Freedom is not anarchy.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- peppers-ghost 2y agoWe already imprison more people than any other country on earth.
- reverendsteveii 2y agohey now, that's not fair *more people than any nation in human history
- gjsman-1000 2y agoWrong statement. The question is: Do they deserve it? Do not assume that heterogenous countries should be compared with homogenous countries. EDIT: For the person strawmanning me as a racist: Consider a nation like Japan, or Finland. Everyone is of similar genetic background, similar wealth, similar living conditions, similar strengths, similar weaknesses, similar struggles, similar educational opportunities, similar transportation requirements, similar family background. Compare that to the US: Wildly different genetic backgrounds, massive wealth gaps, massive differences in living conditions, massive differences in strengths and weaknesses, massively different struggles, massively different opportunities, different transportation requirements, different family backgrounds. In Finland or Japan, the amount of empathy you naturally have for other people is very strong, because you can see how most people are just like you, and are inherently less likely to be violent to people you see as similar to yourself. In the US, developing hate for the "outsider" is much easier, no matter who it may be - take last week with the shooting of the healthcare CEO. Diversity is great for people who benefit from diversity; but there will (in my opinion) always be a subset for whom diversity is a temptation to engage in tribalism. It would stand to reason then, that a heterogeneous country is going to be inherently more violent, and have a higher incarceration rate, than a homogenous one, and therefore comparing violence between the two is like comparing apples-to-oranges. EDIT 2: For the secondary "racist" complainant: You're making the assumption that me pointing out "genetic differences" implies superiority/inferiority. I'm merely saying that it affects whether Random Normal Person A views Random Normal Person B as being similar to themselves. Even if Random Normal Person A is not deliberately racist, it does follow that violence is more likely between people who don't see themselves in each other. Even if we are not deliberately racist, humans are inherently tribal. Heck, we're tribal over blue bubbles versus green bubbles, and letting something that stupid control interaction. There's no way skin color does not also have an effect, consciously or not, maliciously or not, causing an estrangement between the two groups, without implying that blue is better than green or vice versa. The point is: I'm saying we have differences. Differences (as seen even on smartphones) cause tribal behavior. Tribal behavior (I am theorizing) causes increased violence between tribes inherently. Because of this, a nation with many differences, should not be compared to nations with few.
- hash872 2y ago(I really don't like this but) I definitely expect the future will involve ubiquitous on-person video & audio recording. People will walk around with devices that constantly record every interaction, which will eventually seem normal. A lot of formerly private conversations will be uploaded to whatever social media we have in the future, some stuff will go viral, etc. Goodbye any semblance of privacy!
- MetaWhirledPeas 2y agoYeah this might just be a bunch of suits seizing an opportunity created by cheap technology (and not an indicator of some moral decline, the position I instinctively moved to at first).
- CSMastermind 2y agoSeems like a great market for non-recorded spaces. Or society will eventually just develop strong norms about recording.
- soupfordummies 2y agoThis is already kinda starting to happen to a lesser degree with phone-free events or the nightclub phone stickers posted a couple weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42352825 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42352825
- pjc50 2y agoAssymetric recording. There will be people recording you, but you'll be either legally barred from recording them or banned from publishing it on the Internet. (this is likely where the norms around recording will end up - reinforcing the existing power structure)
- morkalork 2y agoThis is very true, you can film people in public but if you step on to private property and do the same you can be told to stop, and removed if you don't. It will be entirely asymmetric.
- MetaWhirledPeas 2y agoAt first glance this seems like an indicator of the country's overall moral health. But when I went to look up crime statistics I was told property crime has been declining since the 90s. What gives? Is this an example of misleading statistics, or is there something else? One hypothesis could be that a reduction in employee/customer engagement within stores creates more opportunities for theft. More self-checkout lines, fewer department representatives roaming around. Maybe?
- m_ke 2y agoThis is what happens when you have an economy driven by finance, with corporate overlords who see their 2 million employees as numbers in a spreadsheet that can be moved around to squeeze out as much "shareholder value" as possible.
- vorpalhex 2y agoIt can be true that crime can be decreasing and that retail thefts can be up. Crimee trends can change as opportunity shifts. This seems to be fueled by perceived changes in the legal risk of smash and grabs.
- bilbo0s 2y agoYou don't give body cams to counter retail theft. There are better surveillance systems for that. The body cams are for safety vis-a-vis personal offenses not really property offenses. I understand why the cameras are there, and I still believe it takes society in an ominous direction. Soon, everything you do will be uploaded and processed because everyone is recording every interaction. With "smart* eye glasses, with body cams, with phones and watches, and so on. Maybe ubiquitous gaze is the only way to be safe, or to ensure you capture violent offenders? But I think we should all take a moment to think about the consequences of establishing ubiquitous gaze long term.
- vorpalhex 2y agoIncreased retail theft increases the risk of employee confrontation or employee directed violence. Increased risk is not the same as increased occurrences (but it wouldn't be surprising for them to both increase.) Liability wise you still want to respond to the risk.
- eadmund 2y agoIt’s not keeping them safe: it’s recording in order to facilitate an investigation if someone harms them. That might serve a deterrent effect, but given how much crime is a result of poor impulse control, it may not have as strong an effect as one might like.
- NBJack 2y agoLet's not forget unless this is constantly uploading, hostile folks will be even more inclined to attempt assault to 'remove evidence' from the employee.
- r00fus 2y agoThis sounds incredibly risky - given other employees may be nearby and the stores already have fixed cameras everywhere. After the first year or two of such incidents spiking it'll go down quickly. note: I really don't like the idea of a panopticon
- gjsman-1000 2y ago> may not have as strong an effect as one might like You’re forgetting how much crime is motivated by “merciful” judges afraid to give long sentences to people who are incapable of functioning in society. All you have to do is look at El Salvador for the ultimate proof study. According to CNN, murders fell by 97.7%. The western academic whines about the innocent; but NGOs invited to oversee the project have yet to make a single convincing innocence story. There’s also the issue that crime is fundamentally, at its very root, a punishment of the innocent. Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the harmless.
- I-M-S 2y agoEl Salvador's case is not as clear cut as it might seem - see #3 at https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-prison https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comment...
- 2y ago
- bitshiftfaced 2y agoConsider what life will be like for the employee once they combine this with vision models. Constant supervision by an all-seeing robo-boss.
- bloomingkales 2y agoI’ve had paranoid breaks in life where I felt I was being watched or monitored. It truly changed how I behaved, where I walked, stuff I did/say. That quantum observer principle follows here. Just being observed can influence things, in this case reducing crime. But think about what I just described, a literal paranoid state. It’s quite uncomfortable.
- xnx 2y agoThere may be some safety (e.g. lawsuit defense) justification, but this is also a trojan horse for increased employee behavior/performance surveillance. Pair and always on microphone with text-to-speech and some language model and it becomes even easier to fire employees at the earliest hint of union organizing.
- geor9e 2y agoIncoming alert from Wally, the Walmart AI - Hi there! My vision model has detected you're not following the latest TPS protocol. Remember, all TPS reports must have the updated coversheets before they go out. Please comply immediately to maintain operational efficiency. Thanks for your cooperation!
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]