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Home Depot sued for 'secretly' using facial recognition at self-checkouts

426 points by mikece 1y ago

usbpoet 1y ago
What's the purpose of the green square, anyways? Why not just have a regular camera feed?
- nfinished 1y ago
  Lazy subcontracted software engineers
- mytailorisrich 1y ago
  It could a psychological trick: Look the camera is filming and we got your face specifically, so don't try to steal. In my local supermarket, the screen turns on and shows the face of the customer when they select "finish and pay", which I suspect is to give a "honesty nudge".
- theamk 1y ago
  Increase deterrence effect to scare away shoplifters. Home depot goes out of the way to make its cameras visible. There is a large "camera" sign, bright light to catch your attention, a visible display to show it's not a fake, and sometimes even a motion activated chime. I assume the green square around the face is the next step in a game.
  - kjkjadksj 1y ago
    The shoplifters don’t care. Look at any hardware section at homedepot. Half the bags are ripped open. Try and find some stock they say is there online. Its not it already got stolen. The registers is not where they need to be combatting theft. It is everywhere else in that store.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - npteljes 1y ago
      Some shoplifters don't care. There is no good trick that works on everyone. >The registers is not where they need to be combating theft. There is plenty of theft happening at the self-checkout registers as well, as it's very easy to do.
    - fercircularbuf 1y ago
      As someone living in Japan, the sheer number of instances of theft in your description shocks me. Is this that common there?
      - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
        That is certainly not my experience in the stores I go to.
      - codingdave 1y ago
        Nope, I've never seen anything like that. To be fair, I'm sure some stores have higher crime rates than others, and just knowing human nature, people whose experiences are pleasant and uneventful probably aren't taking time to share anecdotes about their local stores.
      - mattlondon 1y ago
        Often happens in the UK for things like bags of screws or bathroom/plumbing fittings. The charitable view is someone is opening the packaging to e.g. make sure that the thread is the right size (in the UK especially we suffer from annoying mixture of old legacy imperial measurement era pipes/threads/etc as well as metric). The unchartiable view is they are opening the packet and stealing the bit they need/lost/broke 45 minutes earlier and need to finish the job.
        hakfoo 1y ago
        This could be a by-product of bad merchandising too. The local Home Depot sells some types of screws only in pre-packed bags. The Ace Hardware a block over (a franchise of independently owned shops) sells the same screws from cabinets with several hundred types of loose parts, and you can select as many as you need and bag yourself. You can even put multiple types and prices of items in one bag So if you need one, HD makes you buy four. If you need sixteen, HD makes you buy a bunch of extra plastic waste. That might create an unexpected nudge towards just ripping the bag and pocketing the rest.
  - pants2 1y ago
    Ironically, Home Depot is the only store I ever shoplifted from because of a bad UX on their app. They have/had a "shop in store" mode, where you can scan an item and pay for it in the app. So I scan and pay and leave. A few days later I get an email "your item hasn't been picked up and you've been refunded." Apparently if you scan an item and pay for it in the store they still expect you to wait for their staff to approve you, or something. It wasn't clear. This was also only necessary because they didn't accept Apple pay so I had no way of paying for my items except through the app.
  - m463 1y ago
    I hate the beeping cameras in the tools aisle and frequently stop browsing and leave also locked cabinets... cause me to not buy whatever is in them.
    - mattegan 1y ago
      Came here hoping someone would mention those absolutely cursed cameras - the ones with the pre-canned video of a guy in a back office "monitoring" the feeds? Gets to me the worst when I'm on my 3rd Home Depot trip of the day BEEP looking through a box of pipe fittings that is filled with everything _except_ the fitting matching the label on the box BEEP okay.. the Home Depot website says it's in stock at the one 20 minutes up the store BEEP but, that's what it said about BEEP the stock at this store so.. but hmm BEEP maybe I could combine these two other fittings and save a BEEP ... trip to the other store, okay I'll look here for... BEEP hmm, the two fittings I would need to combine also aren't in the right BEEP box, but... it looks like maybe there's some that someone put back into a BEEP different box? Oh, wait BEEP _none_ of these fittings are in their correct box? What!? BEEP Sorry I've just never had anybody to talk with this about. I hate those things with a passion. Let me know if you'd like to start a support group.
      - theamk 1y ago
        And yet, we keep going here... There are fewer and fewer physical stores left that sell non-food for reasonable prices. Home Depot is often the only choice (at least in my area, the competitors, Lowes and Ace Hardwares, are more expensive, sell fewer things, and sometimes worse quality too)
  - nmeofthestate 1y ago
    >Increase deterrence effect to scare away shoplifters. Exactly - these checkout monitors are positioned so you can see you're being filmed. I'm surprised the purpose of this is unclear to anyone.
  - luma 1y ago
    Around here they have been deploying parking lot camera systems with a blinking blue light. Some sources have suggested these sorts of "made you look" attention grabbers are being deployed near cameras in order to get people to reflexively look at the camera, giving the system a better shot at capturing face biometrics.
- npteljes 1y ago
  Emphasizes that the system pays attention to the shopper. They are aiming for a psychological effect.
delichon 1y ago
The green box around his face in the image is evidence that it detected a face, but not that it had collected or stored identifying biometrics. It would be legal for a POS device to detect any face, e.g. to help decide when to reset for the next customer. But as I understand it, this would usually be enough to trigger discovery, where he could learn the necessary technical details. Even if this suit fails, the store is vulnerable to continuous repeats by other parties. Written consent from each customer is the only viable protection. So the BIPA law may mean that face detection, not just recognition, is not practical in Illinois.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- m463 1y ago
  It still "recognizes a face" and shows this. Legal terms do not have to be scientific or engineering terms.
  - mlyle 1y ago
    Detecting a face is not the same as recognizing a face in either engineering parlance or typical usage. If I don't determine this is a face that I've seen before, I've not recognized the face (maybe I have recognized that there is a face there). To recognize entails re-cognizing: knowing again what was previously known. Simply noticing that something is a face does not satisfy that; it is only detecting. Without linking it to prior knowledge, recognition hasn’t occurred.
    - m463 1y ago
      but just think about other things. Like the google 'incognito' mode that wasn't private browsing, and google was found guilty. engineers might say "of course it's not private" but the court opinion differed. common sense to a normal person might not match engineer thinking.
    - conductr 1y ago
      Is this coming from legal definitions? Because, one of the valid dictionary definitions of "recognition" is simply acknowledging something exists. No prior knowledge needed for that, other than the generic training the facial detection software has undergone.
FridayoLeary 1y ago
Sounds like the guy is fishing here. Theres no proof in the article that Home Depot is actually storing his information. I'm personally pretty suspicious about the cameras at self checkouts and at the entrance of supermarkets, but this lawsuit looks like a waste of time, or this is a really badly written article.
- mixmastamyk 1y ago
  Not our first rodeo. Post 2010 we ask for evidence data collection is not happening, and not being sold for $$$.
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    You can't prove something is not happening, nor even provide evidence. So that would be a quite unreasonable standard if that truly is what you think we should enact.
    - scyzoryk_xyz 1y ago
      Well, you can if you're suing a company or entity and there is a complete picture of the situation collected. This isn't a criminal case - I would not be surprised if this isn't about setting a precedent. The result clarifying boundaries for what can and what can't be done.
    - mixmastamyk 1y ago
      A forensic study… audit of the source code, firewall logs, and device storage would be enough information to determine if it is happening or not. Absolute proof it could never happen? No, but we don’t need that.
- codingdave 1y ago
  Yes, he probably is fishing. But the lawsuit is how you fish. It is how you force a company to share information about what they do or do not store. If they don't store your data, it will be dropped. If they do store your data, it will proceed. Even if it gets dropped, it was not a waste of time because someone is making an effort to find out what is going on. So you are 100% correct - the article is badly written because it doesn't give that context to how people use the legal system to determine whether or not there is a case to be had.
JohnFen 1y ago
I have developed an extreme distrust of self-checkout systems generally, in part because of the risk of this sort of thing. As a result, I simply don't use them at all anymore.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  Isn't it safe to assume there's face or gait recognition all around stores though? In general, if not most places yet then inevitably soon. It's only an issue here because of an Illinois law, how many states don't have that?
  - JohnFen 1y ago
    Well, I do try to choose where I shop in part to reduce the amount of spying I'm subjected to, but yes, this is of course a risk. However, where a store might be spying on me when I'm just doing my shopping, it's guaranteed they're spying on me if I'm using self-checkout. Honestly, though, the privacy invasion is only part of why I don't do self-checkout. Another major part is that I don't want to risk the store thinking that I stole something from them.
- beaviskhan 1y ago
  I don't use them when it's an option - but Home Depot in particular often has zero actual cashiers. They've always got a couple people standing around in self checkout to assist when the system (inevitably?) doesn't work properly, though...
  - frosted-flakes 1y ago
    HD has really good self checkouts though. They don't require any interaction with the touch screen except hitting "Done", nor do they have over-sensitive anti-theft scale systems. It's just a wireless barcode scanner on a table with a receipt printer and a payment terminal. The screen shows everything you've scanned with pictures! and legible product descriptions, which makes it really easy to make sure you scanned everything correctly.
legitster 1y ago
My understanding of these systems is that the green box just detects a face to a) make it easier to scan hours of footage later looking for faces b) add a subtle intimidation factor against crime. Is a picture of a face count as "biometric" information? I strongly doubt it and suspect this case will be thrown out.
- conductr 1y ago
  I highly doubt they stopped there. If they're doing that already, they're taking the time/expense to scan hours of footage later and they would absolutely go further and assign each face a risk score based on what they think happened during your visits. They will flag you next time so the LP person can know to watch you closer in real time. I personally don't think they are sitting on evidence to charge you with a bigger crime later like some comments suggest, but I do think they would like to know which of the 10 busy self-checkout registers are most important to watch in real time at any given moment.
- mattlondon 1y ago
  Yes I think it is likely security theatre - "smile you're on camera!" type things. In some stores here in the UK they have CCTV with a sort of attention getting dancing LED light ring around the lens which I assume is there to a) trick you into looking straight at it (and so get a clear shot of your face) and b) remind people that cameras are there doing something.
- kotaKat 1y ago
  It’s “face detection blocking” built into the camera/display. Otherwise, the video footage is just straight sent as ONVIF to the main DVR for whatever processing is done there (which could be a lot more nefarious). Wren Solutions / Costar seem to be the main vendors of these “public view monitors” — such as the PVM10-B-2086. https://6473609.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6473609/2023%20Website%20Documents/2023%20Monitor%20PI%20Sheets%20-%20Website/PVM10-B-2086-W.pdf https://6473609.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6473609... “Face Detection Boxes (Neon Green, Front and Side Detection)”
bgwalter 1y ago
Don't use self-checkouts. You do all the work, slower than the cashier, and are treated like cattle. Often there is a supervisor breathing down your neck and demanding the receipt before the exit doors open. Now there is facial recognition.
- richwater 1y ago
  > slower than the cashier...Often there is a supervisor breathing down your neck Not sure what stores you're going to go but this is nowhere near my experience.
  - bgwalter 1y ago
    You scan faster than a trained cashier? Do the self-checkouts in the US use RFID? Here in the EU I have to scan, clumsily and slowly.
    - ac29 1y ago
      If the option is waiting in line for a cashier versus going to an open self checkout (this is almost always the case where I shop), then yes, self checkout is faster. Even aside from the line, the only thing clerks are sometimes faster at in my experience is ringing up fresh produce where codes have to be typed in (these codes are usually on a label on the produce, but if not you have to go through a lookup procedure if you haven't memorized the code).
    - RiverCrochet 1y ago
      In the U.S., particularly the Walmarts I've been to, cashiers are usually slower than the self-checkouts now. Their self-checkouts used to be slow because the registers would verify the weight of items on the scale (the surface where you bag it) before letting you put it in the cart. If it didn't like the weight it would force you to put it back in the bag. I don't think they do this anymore. Asset protection can view a camera pointed at the scanner and bags if they think you're stealing. Furthermore, it's hard for Walmart to retain people, so cashiers are treated like a dump stat. They won't really dedicate people to checking out anymore unless that's all they can do, e.g. elderly, so someone who's a cashier all day tends to be slow because they're accomodating that person. So you could be the fastest cashier in the world but it won't mean anything as far as raises, etc. Your fast cashiers are often pulled off and stocking unless its super busy.
eth0up 1y ago
I frequent the Home Despot and Lowe Life's, until recently, traditionally favoring the Home Despot. The last two visits revealed the complete elimination of checkout lines and the appearance of a new cluster of self service registers with a new orientation perpendicular to the old lines. As I stood before the register, looking at the large monitor, I watched my dehumanized face beleaguered by green lines. I realized it had no other purpose but to foist an impression of my dirty face toward me, conveying my position as a filthy, groveling consumer pestering them with my petty needs. The camera could easily do its work without the hostile display, but then the customer may get away with a sense of dignity, which to them would be a form of shoplifting, or squandered neuromarketing potential. During each visit, I make it a point to express my contempt for this to any ostensibly human employees nearby. I do so respectfully, yet their pride as high priests of home improvement and the glorious providence of private equity that blesses their sacred mission always results in perceived offense. Despite prefacing my grievance as not directed personally at them, the allure of indignance prevails and I always walk away as the bad guy who dared piss on their holy gilded ground. Their use of cameras bothers me for different reasons, but I'm glad to fan the flames.
- os2warpman 1y ago
  >I realized it had no other purpose but to foist an impression of my dirty face toward me, conveying my position as a filthy, groveling consumer pestering them with my petty needs. I look at myself and go "damn that's one sexy dude I'm gonna jut out my chin and stand up straight so if anyone looks at this, they fall in love with me". Also, the staff doesn't identify as anything except someone trying to make it through their day.
  - eth0up 1y ago
    I think a bit of Peter Principle and role enmeshment is at play here. Halo effect? Moral disengagement? Or perhaps it's truly pure gratitude and warm hearted loyalty for having a job, any job, which our future suggests won't be very common soon. On a more serious note, I don't think it's terribly valid to dismiss these behaviors (Home Despot mug shaming, not zealous employee bots) as nothing more than a fun opportunity to admire one's reflection. It may not by itself be a keystone stride on the path of anomie, but it's a stride indeed and I don't want that kind of society. Maybe you do. Home Depot and Blackrock certainly do. I don't.
ProllyInfamous 1y ago
Home Depot's self-checkouts are using this facial ID to build/maintain their shoplifting database — this tracks thefts by the same person across multiple visits, and is used over time to build up a case against errant self-checkout-ers (i.e. to get them above a theft threshhold, at which point prosecution becomes easier). There is also CCTV AI (whether artificial intelligence, or actually indians) which can intervene with your self-checkout process to "remind" you that you didn't actually scan everything.
- JKCalhoun 1y ago
  > There is also CCTV AI (whether artificial intelligence, or actually indians) That's a new one. It's clever but I feel guilty having laughed.
  - loeg 1y ago
    It's not new. The term dates to at least 2024; probably earlier.
  - krunck 1y ago
    Why guilty? The Indians are doing their job that stupid tech companies pay them for. The phrase has nothing to do with Indians but rather with unmasking the "AI washing" done by companies trying to drive up stock prices.
    - ProllyInfamous 1y ago
      ¿Por qué no los dos?
- AngryData 1y ago
  Im not sure we should allow such premeditated charge stacking, it is just further weaponizing the law and fueling our prison industrial complex for zero gain to society. Who is to say many of those people wouldn't have stopped after being caught and charged the first time? Imagine if cops sat on the side of the road not pulling people over, just recording minor traffic offenses in a file, and then a year or so later drop 10+ charges on a person all at once and turning the collective charges into felony reckless driving charges? People would be outraged and nothing of worth would be gained.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
neilv 1y ago
I'm pretty sick of misguided/enthusiastic Loss Prevention people, and these digital systems amplify their hijinks. The most conspicuous one recently was at one upscale grocery chain within the last year. There was what I took to be a dedicated LP person who seemed to be lurking behind the self-checkouts, to watch me specifically, and I stood there until he went away. Then, as I was checking out, this employee came up behind me and very persistently told me that I hadn't scanned something. Annoyed, I pointed on the screen where it showed I had. His eyes went wide, and he spun around, and quickly hurried away, no apology. If I had to guess, I'd say they didn't code that intervention/confrontation as their mess-up, and I wouldn't be surprised if I still got dinged as suspicious, to cover their butts. We do seem to have a lot of shoplifting here in recent years. And I have even recently seen a street person in a chain pharmacy here, simply tossing boxes of product off the shelves, into a dingy black trash bag, in the middle of the day. Somehow none of the usual employees around. Yet there's often employees moving to stand behind me at that same store, when I use their self-checkout. (Maybe my N95 mask is triggering some association with masked bandits, yet bearded street person with big trash bag full of product makes them think of lovable Santa? But an N95 is a good idea in a pharmacy on a college campus, where the Covid factories that are college students will go when they have symptoms.)
- neilv 1y ago
  Less relevant, but reminds me of my all-time favorite grocery store LP encounter, near MIT. The chain was running this big promotion with lots of tear-open prize tickets that are either coupons or game board pieces, so I had been visiting often, to buy ramen noodles (one ticket per package!) and I had a small stack of coupons in my wallet. I was checking my coupons for this visit in the middle of a center aisle, and was returning my wallet to my back pocket, when this nice middle-aged probably church-going woman store employee walked up, looked at me, and the "oh!" expression on her face said she was very surprised that I was stealing. She hurried off. When I get to the checkout, this middle-aged guy acting a bit like a drunk comes behind me and boxes me in, by sprawling across both the lane and the conveyor. The young checkout woman says to him, annoyed, "Not you again." The guy strikes up a conversation with me. "That's a nice backpack. ... If I had a backpack like that, people would think I was stealing something." It was an ordinary cheap bare-bones store-branded backpack. He's getting close to illegally detaining me, which would go extremely badly for him. To de-escalate, I do my best folksy code-switching, and pretend not to know what's going on. My hyperobservant mode also kicked in: there was abnormal maneuvers of multiple people from the other side of the checkouts. One young guy coming up with the others, my eyes dark to him, he sees I see him, and for some reason gets a look like he's noping the f right out of whatever is going down, and he spins 180 and quickly walks away. Eventually, this friendly and sensible person, who I took to be the manager on duty, comes up on the other side of the checkout, and we have a friendly conversation about the ticket promotion. I think she immediately realized that I was a good-natured MIT type, not a shoplifter. And I would guess she thought the LP guy was a clown who risks getting the store sued someday.
47282847 1y ago
I make it a point not to use self-checkout systems because I want to support human interaction even if basic, and contribute to jobs for humans. And cash (most self-checkouts here are card-only). I understand it’s a losing battle on all fronts.
- moomoo11 1y ago
  Don’t you think it’s selfish when a small minority of people hold on to some fading ideals in a world where people are genuinely better off with more efficiency? Like imagine being in the era when electricity was becoming more prevalent and I’m sure some people were complaining about some ideal then as well. That said I do agree that self checkouts should not be using methods beyond what’s reasonably necessary.
  - nobody9999 1y ago
    >Don’t you think it’s selfish when a small minority of people hold on to some fading ideals in a world where people are genuinely better off with more efficiency? I'm all for more efficiency. Me fumbling with self-checkout is the opposite of efficiency. What's that? I should learn to do it better? How much would that cost in terms of both time and money? Multiply that by several hundred million, as compared with a few hundred thousand cashiers. You're saying that (x)250,000,000 < (x)500,000, where x = the cost in time and money to become proficient in checking stuff out. Is that correct? If so, your math seems a little off. AFAICT, the only folks who get the benefit of this "efficiency" are the store owners who, instead of paying folks to do the job, makes the customer do it instead. What's that? Those savings are passed along to the customer? Give me even one example of this being the case. I've certainly never seen it.
    - moomoo11 1y ago
      Peak efficiency is having someone else shop for you or just getting things delivered. That's what I do. I only go to whole Foods on Tue for the fun of seeing what’s on sale.
idiomat9000 1y ago
I want to be paid in rebates for working at self checkout.
- npteljes 1y ago
  The rebate is the privilege of not having to employ a cashier in the process, and I'm not even kidding.
- saubeidl 1y ago
  Self-checkout means you can do a self-rebate ;)
- itake 1y ago
  I'm paid in shorter checkout times for working at self checkout.
  - ryukoposting 1y ago
    I have yet to encounter a self-checkout system competent enough to actually speed up the experience.
    - mattlondon 1y ago
      The ones without scales are the quickest and generally fast. One queue for 10-12 checkouts etc...its fast unless you get some luddite infront of you who seem to enjoy proving some point to no one about how they can't "work the machine" etc.
    - kube-system 1y ago
      They are individually slow but highly multithreaded. The single cashier that stores hire these days may have a 10% higher clock speed, but their queue length is high.
      - ryukoposting 1y ago
        Sounds like the problem is that we aren't hiring enough cashiers. Using a Kroger self-checkout is tantamount to waterboarding. Hesitate for a quarter of a second before placing your item on the scale? Angry prompt. Put an item on the scanner (which itself is another scale) but it doesn't scan within half a second? Angry prompt. Get three angry prompts? Now you get a fourth angry prompt, except this one can only be dismissed by a staff member, and we've already established that they're few and far between. I've given up on actually bagging my items while checking out. I can't rearrange anything in the bags, or move the bags, without the checkout machine throwing a hissy fit. So no, it's not actually faster, because I have to bag everything after paying for it. It totally breaks the pipeline of the checkout.
black_13 1y ago
[dead]
ndsipa_pomu 1y ago
This is similar to the time that ASDA (in the UK) was accused by a customer of violating the GDPR by using face detection in their self-checkouts. ASDA's statement was that the face detection was for the purpose of preventing theft (GDPR allows exceptions for the purpose of law enforcement) and that the information was not stored or used for any other purpose. https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/nottingham-news/asda-issues-statement-over-claim-8279205 https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/nottingham-news/asda-iss...
dominicrose 1y ago
There's a lot of news recently abouts companies just simply hiding things. Dishonesty seems to be the new normal everywhere. There is no god.
- Nextgrid 1y ago
  Corporation-on-consumer fraud has effectively always been legal in the US. When a corporation lies for profit and gets caught, it is merely a "mistake" and no criminal charges are filed. Individuals aren't afforded the same privilege.
bob1029 1y ago
I've noticed cameras in the payment terminals at some Kroger stores lately. All checkout lanes, not just self-checkout. Also, the HD nearest me has no fewer than 10 ALPRs in their parking lot. They've made absolutely sure that you're gonna get into the database.
- unwind 1y ago
  ALPR = Automatic License-Plate Recognition [1] for those not familiar with the acronym. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni...
  - mnw21cam 1y ago
    The more conventional acronym is ANPR.
    - kube-system 1y ago
      Whatever is more conventional depends on the convention for whatever the plate is called in the respective location.
saubeidl 1y ago
I am of the firm opinion that if big corps want to outsource their labor to me, the customer, then it is my right to treat myself to a few free items here and there as compensation for the work being done. If you don't want that to happen, give cashiers their jobs back, you greedy bastards.
- dahcryn 1y ago
  your compensation is speed, you get to go home faster. Is that not enough?
  - Loughla 1y ago
    I have never experienced a faster checkout with self checkout. If it's super fast, it's just for a few items, and a cashier would've been just as fast. If it's for a lot of items, there's a decent chance I have to look up some codes or something; which a cashier is better and faster at. The trade off of self checkout is cost savings for the business. These savings are not passed on to me. Therefore, I don't give a flying rat's ass about them. I'm with OP. If I'm working for the business, they will compensate me. Willingly or unwillingly.
    - PhilipRoman 1y ago
      IME it's faster because the queue is shorter. You can fit about 2.5 self checkout machines in the same space, enabling more people to checkout in parallel.
  - kube-system 1y ago
    I don't condone theft... but I do remember a day before self checkouts existed, and stores had to hire enough cashiers to be faster than their competitors. Those dozens of checkout lanes at the front of big-box stores weren't always decorative, they used to all be staffed during busy periods.
    - saubeidl 1y ago
      Yup, the speed has not gotten better, it's just that it's on me to be speedy as opposed to somebody that gets paid for it. It's a lousy deal for everyone except the business.
pilingual 1y ago
Don't people dodge these cameras? When I used a credit card at home depot self checkout I was asked if I wanted to have the receipt sent to a specific email address I entered previously online. Creepy. So I started using cash only. Last year I went to get some low voltage wire. I walked for several aisles in both directions to find someone to open the cage. Not a soul. So I reached behind the cage and pulled it out, went to self checkout, began paying with cash. The machine said it couldn't issue change and to see an associate. Seemed odd as it was early in the day. Associate casually went to another register and got me change. When I went to my car (parked far away of course) there was a police car hanging out right next to it. Nothing further happened, but all too coincidental. I discovered a smaller local hardware store and go there. The employees constantly ask you if you need help which is the complete opposite of home depot. Under no circumstance will I shop at Home Depot again. (And, today I drove by that HD and noticed they installed multiple ALPR.)
- nmeofthestate 1y ago
  >When I went to my car (parked far away of course) there was a police car hanging out right next to it. Nothing further happened, but all too coincidental. I think you're being paranoid.
  - pilingual 1y ago
    The location where my car was parked was remote. There is no explanation for the proximity of his idling vehicle.
    - prawn 1y ago
      The remote parts of the car park are usually where the least desirable sorts hang out. (I park in the same areas due to an oversized vehicle, so notice them.) I also think you're being paranoid.
      - pilingual 1y ago
        Paranoia is irrelevant. The design of Home Depot is unwelcoming. In contrast the local hardware store succeeded in using its employees as both a deterrent to theft and being welcoming to its customers. https://www.securityinformed.com/news/co-855-ga-co-1753-ga.20.html https://www.securityinformed.com/news/co-855-ga-co-1753-ga.2...
mattlondon 1y ago
The people at the checkouts are typically not the ones stealing things. There is a bit of a spate here in the UK where just walk in, literally empty shelves into bags and walk out. Some security guards or assistants try to intervene, but apparently some security guards (e.g. ones at apple stores) are told not to try and intervene so really what's the point? The plot twist for this though is that the police are increasingly using "facial recognition vans" to spot people walking around in town centers and apprehending them for thefts from stores, sometimes months previously since they have CCTV footage of them doing it. One hopes there is more evidence than just a hit on the facial ID database as we all know how inaccurate and biased they can be.
- dahcryn 1y ago
  you'd be surprised how many people steal small valuable items and hide it by doing normal shopping and having a normal shopping cart for their other items. That expensive 30 dollar bottle of shampoo for example, in the handbag, and just checkout the other items like normal. I worked at a place where we could easily track people through the store. Not ID them, but if at any point we clicked on a person, and we could see from entering the store until exiting the store everywhere they passed. shoplifting is super easy to prove after the fact, just hard to do whilst they are still in the store
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    So, we're talking a 30 dollar bottle of shampoo vs. people walking in, dumping the whole shelf into a trash bag and walking out. And yet we're putting all this technology, surveillance and loss prevention staff in place to catch the shampoo guy rather than trash bag man.
doctor_radium 1y ago
Maybe the plaintiff is fishing, but this is the reason I never abandoned my Covid mask after the pandemic. You want to string up cameras like Christmas lights? I can wear a mask! What ticks me off more is WalMart and some grocery stores putting monitors over certain aisles, to show you're being monitored. I'll sometimes flip them off. Aldi really annoyed me by showing live video on the self checkout screen with the notice "Monitoring In Progress". Then I realized Walmart and many others have a camera notch on their monitors, too, so perhaps I should thank Aldi for at least being honest? Anybody using facial recognition or similar may know me very well by now. I'm the guy in the mask who flips them off.
- JosephRedfern 1y ago
  > live video on the self checkout screen with the notice "Monitoring In Progress" That really winds me up too - it shows such contempt for legitimate customers.
- aembleton 1y ago
  They've still got your gait analysis.
  - stogot 1y ago
    Wear different size shoes and put them on the wrong foot. Your brain will be struggling to have a consistent gait
    - cameron_b 1y ago
      be sure to buy such shoes with cash or the Amazon cart ( or CC data ) will lead back to you.
    - Maximus9000 1y ago
      This might fool the gait analysis, but they will come up with more metrics to analyze you by. You can't beat it. IMO, the only way to stop this is government
MagicMoonlight 1y ago
I'm fine with that, shoplifters are scum. I don't see the point in campaigning against things like this, because it only protects bad people. If the government wants to get you, they won't use home depot to do it, they'll just take you from your house or shoot you in the street. If they want to spy on you, they'll break into your house and put microphones under your carpet and cameras in your walls. If we actually had cameras like this everywhere, there would be so much less crime. Instead of the drug addict robbing twenty shops a day, they'd be arrested in the second shop.
kevin_thibedeau 1y ago
The trick is to shop at a high-shrinkage Home Depot where their self-checkout stations are all staffed by cashiers and you get concierge escort service whenever you purchase something locked in a cage.
- CGMthrowaway 1y ago
  I almost always prefer a staffed checkout vs. self checkout. One time at the grocery store I watched a cashier clock out, shop for herself, then check out at the self checkout (!). I wonder if she recognized the irony.
Wowhappyfun 1y ago
[flagged]
jimt1234 1y ago
Looks like I need to start dressing like an ICE agent before I do any shopping. Ugh.
arminiusreturns 1y ago
I wonder if it is image only or using IR - my anti IR sunshades will prevent the latter from working...
andrewmcwatters 1y ago
Secretly? They show you they're recording your face. They don't point the cameras at both the scanner and your face simultaneously. Anyone rubbing two brain cells together could deduce that they're using facial recognition.
Bluescreenbuddy 1y ago
Illinois is going to bend them over if it turns out to be true.

426 points by mikece 1y ago

usbpoet 1y ago

What's the purpose of the green square, anyways? Why not just have a regular camera feed?

nfinished 1y ago
Lazy subcontracted software engineers
mytailorisrich 1y ago
It could a psychological trick: Look the camera is filming and we got your face specifically, so don't try to steal. In my local supermarket, the screen turns on and shows the face of the customer when they select "finish and pay", which I suspect is to give a "honesty nudge".
theamk 1y ago
Increase deterrence effect to scare away shoplifters. Home depot goes out of the way to make its cameras visible. There is a large "camera" sign, bright light to catch your attention, a visible display to show it's not a fake, and sometimes even a motion activated chime. I assume the green square around the face is the next step in a game.
- kjkjadksj 1y ago
  The shoplifters don’t care. Look at any hardware section at homedepot. Half the bags are ripped open. Try and find some stock they say is there online. Its not it already got stolen. The registers is not where they need to be combatting theft. It is everywhere else in that store.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - npteljes 1y ago
    Some shoplifters don't care. There is no good trick that works on everyone. >The registers is not where they need to be combating theft. There is plenty of theft happening at the self-checkout registers as well, as it's very easy to do.
  - fercircularbuf 1y ago
    As someone living in Japan, the sheer number of instances of theft in your description shocks me. Is this that common there?
    - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
      That is certainly not my experience in the stores I go to.
    - codingdave 1y ago
      Nope, I've never seen anything like that. To be fair, I'm sure some stores have higher crime rates than others, and just knowing human nature, people whose experiences are pleasant and uneventful probably aren't taking time to share anecdotes about their local stores.
    - mattlondon 1y ago
      Often happens in the UK for things like bags of screws or bathroom/plumbing fittings. The charitable view is someone is opening the packaging to e.g. make sure that the thread is the right size (in the UK especially we suffer from annoying mixture of old legacy imperial measurement era pipes/threads/etc as well as metric). The unchartiable view is they are opening the packet and stealing the bit they need/lost/broke 45 minutes earlier and need to finish the job.
      - hakfoo 1y ago
        This could be a by-product of bad merchandising too. The local Home Depot sells some types of screws only in pre-packed bags. The Ace Hardware a block over (a franchise of independently owned shops) sells the same screws from cabinets with several hundred types of loose parts, and you can select as many as you need and bag yourself. You can even put multiple types and prices of items in one bag So if you need one, HD makes you buy four. If you need sixteen, HD makes you buy a bunch of extra plastic waste. That might create an unexpected nudge towards just ripping the bag and pocketing the rest.
- pants2 1y ago
  Ironically, Home Depot is the only store I ever shoplifted from because of a bad UX on their app. They have/had a "shop in store" mode, where you can scan an item and pay for it in the app. So I scan and pay and leave. A few days later I get an email "your item hasn't been picked up and you've been refunded." Apparently if you scan an item and pay for it in the store they still expect you to wait for their staff to approve you, or something. It wasn't clear. This was also only necessary because they didn't accept Apple pay so I had no way of paying for my items except through the app.
- m463 1y ago
  I hate the beeping cameras in the tools aisle and frequently stop browsing and leave also locked cabinets... cause me to not buy whatever is in them.
  - mattegan 1y ago
    Came here hoping someone would mention those absolutely cursed cameras - the ones with the pre-canned video of a guy in a back office "monitoring" the feeds? Gets to me the worst when I'm on my 3rd Home Depot trip of the day BEEP looking through a box of pipe fittings that is filled with everything _except_ the fitting matching the label on the box BEEP okay.. the Home Depot website says it's in stock at the one 20 minutes up the store BEEP but, that's what it said about BEEP the stock at this store so.. but hmm BEEP maybe I could combine these two other fittings and save a BEEP ... trip to the other store, okay I'll look here for... BEEP hmm, the two fittings I would need to combine also aren't in the right BEEP box, but... it looks like maybe there's some that someone put back into a BEEP different box? Oh, wait BEEP _none_ of these fittings are in their correct box? What!? BEEP Sorry I've just never had anybody to talk with this about. I hate those things with a passion. Let me know if you'd like to start a support group.
    - theamk 1y ago
      And yet, we keep going here... There are fewer and fewer physical stores left that sell non-food for reasonable prices. Home Depot is often the only choice (at least in my area, the competitors, Lowes and Ace Hardwares, are more expensive, sell fewer things, and sometimes worse quality too)
- nmeofthestate 1y ago
  >Increase deterrence effect to scare away shoplifters. Exactly - these checkout monitors are positioned so you can see you're being filmed. I'm surprised the purpose of this is unclear to anyone.
- luma 1y ago
  Around here they have been deploying parking lot camera systems with a blinking blue light. Some sources have suggested these sorts of "made you look" attention grabbers are being deployed near cameras in order to get people to reflexively look at the camera, giving the system a better shot at capturing face biometrics.
npteljes 1y ago
Emphasizes that the system pays attention to the shopper. They are aiming for a psychological effect.

delichon 1y ago

The green box around his face in the image is evidence that it detected a face, but not that it had collected or stored identifying biometrics. It would be legal for a POS device to detect any face, e.g. to help decide when to reset for the next customer. But as I understand it, this would usually be enough to trigger discovery, where he could learn the necessary technical details. Even if this suit fails, the store is vulnerable to continuous repeats by other parties. Written consent from each customer is the only viable protection. So the BIPA law may mean that face detection, not just recognition, is not practical in Illinois.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
m463 1y ago
It still "recognizes a face" and shows this. Legal terms do not have to be scientific or engineering terms.
- mlyle 1y ago
  Detecting a face is not the same as recognizing a face in either engineering parlance or typical usage. If I don't determine this is a face that I've seen before, I've not recognized the face (maybe I have recognized that there is a face there). To recognize entails re-cognizing: knowing again what was previously known. Simply noticing that something is a face does not satisfy that; it is only detecting. Without linking it to prior knowledge, recognition hasn’t occurred.
  - m463 1y ago
    but just think about other things. Like the google 'incognito' mode that wasn't private browsing, and google was found guilty. engineers might say "of course it's not private" but the court opinion differed. common sense to a normal person might not match engineer thinking.
  - conductr 1y ago
    Is this coming from legal definitions? Because, one of the valid dictionary definitions of "recognition" is simply acknowledging something exists. No prior knowledge needed for that, other than the generic training the facial detection software has undergone.

FridayoLeary 1y ago

Sounds like the guy is fishing here. Theres no proof in the article that Home Depot is actually storing his information. I'm personally pretty suspicious about the cameras at self checkouts and at the entrance of supermarkets, but this lawsuit looks like a waste of time, or this is a really badly written article.

mixmastamyk 1y ago
Not our first rodeo. Post 2010 we ask for evidence data collection is not happening, and not being sold for $$$.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago
  You can't prove something is not happening, nor even provide evidence. So that would be a quite unreasonable standard if that truly is what you think we should enact.
  - scyzoryk_xyz 1y ago
    Well, you can if you're suing a company or entity and there is a complete picture of the situation collected. This isn't a criminal case - I would not be surprised if this isn't about setting a precedent. The result clarifying boundaries for what can and what can't be done.
  - mixmastamyk 1y ago
    A forensic study… audit of the source code, firewall logs, and device storage would be enough information to determine if it is happening or not. Absolute proof it could never happen? No, but we don’t need that.
codingdave 1y ago
Yes, he probably is fishing. But the lawsuit is how you fish. It is how you force a company to share information about what they do or do not store. If they don't store your data, it will be dropped. If they do store your data, it will proceed. Even if it gets dropped, it was not a waste of time because someone is making an effort to find out what is going on. So you are 100% correct - the article is badly written because it doesn't give that context to how people use the legal system to determine whether or not there is a case to be had.

JohnFen 1y ago

I have developed an extreme distrust of self-checkout systems generally, in part because of the risk of this sort of thing. As a result, I simply don't use them at all anymore.

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
Isn't it safe to assume there's face or gait recognition all around stores though? In general, if not most places yet then inevitably soon. It's only an issue here because of an Illinois law, how many states don't have that?
- JohnFen 1y ago
  Well, I do try to choose where I shop in part to reduce the amount of spying I'm subjected to, but yes, this is of course a risk. However, where a store might be spying on me when I'm just doing my shopping, it's guaranteed they're spying on me if I'm using self-checkout. Honestly, though, the privacy invasion is only part of why I don't do self-checkout. Another major part is that I don't want to risk the store thinking that I stole something from them.
beaviskhan 1y ago
I don't use them when it's an option - but Home Depot in particular often has zero actual cashiers. They've always got a couple people standing around in self checkout to assist when the system (inevitably?) doesn't work properly, though...
- frosted-flakes 1y ago
  HD has really good self checkouts though. They don't require any interaction with the touch screen except hitting "Done", nor do they have over-sensitive anti-theft scale systems. It's just a wireless barcode scanner on a table with a receipt printer and a payment terminal. The screen shows everything you've scanned with pictures! and legible product descriptions, which makes it really easy to make sure you scanned everything correctly.

legitster 1y ago

My understanding of these systems is that the green box just detects a face to a) make it easier to scan hours of footage later looking for faces b) add a subtle intimidation factor against crime. Is a picture of a face count as "biometric" information? I strongly doubt it and suspect this case will be thrown out.

conductr 1y ago
I highly doubt they stopped there. If they're doing that already, they're taking the time/expense to scan hours of footage later and they would absolutely go further and assign each face a risk score based on what they think happened during your visits. They will flag you next time so the LP person can know to watch you closer in real time. I personally don't think they are sitting on evidence to charge you with a bigger crime later like some comments suggest, but I do think they would like to know which of the 10 busy self-checkout registers are most important to watch in real time at any given moment.
mattlondon 1y ago
Yes I think it is likely security theatre - "smile you're on camera!" type things. In some stores here in the UK they have CCTV with a sort of attention getting dancing LED light ring around the lens which I assume is there to a) trick you into looking straight at it (and so get a clear shot of your face) and b) remind people that cameras are there doing something.
kotaKat 1y ago
It’s “face detection blocking” built into the camera/display. Otherwise, the video footage is just straight sent as ONVIF to the main DVR for whatever processing is done there (which could be a lot more nefarious). Wren Solutions / Costar seem to be the main vendors of these “public view monitors” — such as the PVM10-B-2086. https://6473609.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6473609/2023%20Website%20Documents/2023%20Monitor%20PI%20Sheets%20-%20Website/PVM10-B-2086-W.pdf https://6473609.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/6473609... “Face Detection Boxes (Neon Green, Front and Side Detection)”

bgwalter 1y ago

Don't use self-checkouts. You do all the work, slower than the cashier, and are treated like cattle. Often there is a supervisor breathing down your neck and demanding the receipt before the exit doors open. Now there is facial recognition.

richwater 1y ago
> slower than the cashier...Often there is a supervisor breathing down your neck Not sure what stores you're going to go but this is nowhere near my experience.
- bgwalter 1y ago
  You scan faster than a trained cashier? Do the self-checkouts in the US use RFID? Here in the EU I have to scan, clumsily and slowly.
  - ac29 1y ago
    If the option is waiting in line for a cashier versus going to an open self checkout (this is almost always the case where I shop), then yes, self checkout is faster. Even aside from the line, the only thing clerks are sometimes faster at in my experience is ringing up fresh produce where codes have to be typed in (these codes are usually on a label on the produce, but if not you have to go through a lookup procedure if you haven't memorized the code).
  - RiverCrochet 1y ago
    In the U.S., particularly the Walmarts I've been to, cashiers are usually slower than the self-checkouts now. Their self-checkouts used to be slow because the registers would verify the weight of items on the scale (the surface where you bag it) before letting you put it in the cart. If it didn't like the weight it would force you to put it back in the bag. I don't think they do this anymore. Asset protection can view a camera pointed at the scanner and bags if they think you're stealing. Furthermore, it's hard for Walmart to retain people, so cashiers are treated like a dump stat. They won't really dedicate people to checking out anymore unless that's all they can do, e.g. elderly, so someone who's a cashier all day tends to be slow because they're accomodating that person. So you could be the fastest cashier in the world but it won't mean anything as far as raises, etc. Your fast cashiers are often pulled off and stocking unless its super busy.

eth0up 1y ago

I frequent the Home Despot and Lowe Life's, until recently, traditionally favoring the Home Despot. The last two visits revealed the complete elimination of checkout lines and the appearance of a new cluster of self service registers with a new orientation perpendicular to the old lines. As I stood before the register, looking at the large monitor, I watched my dehumanized face beleaguered by green lines. I realized it had no other purpose but to foist an impression of my dirty face toward me, conveying my position as a filthy, groveling consumer pestering them with my petty needs. The camera could easily do its work without the hostile display, but then the customer may get away with a sense of dignity, which to them would be a form of shoplifting, or squandered neuromarketing potential. During each visit, I make it a point to express my contempt for this to any ostensibly human employees nearby. I do so respectfully, yet their pride as high priests of home improvement and the glorious providence of private equity that blesses their sacred mission always results in perceived offense. Despite prefacing my grievance as not directed personally at them, the allure of indignance prevails and I always walk away as the bad guy who dared piss on their holy gilded ground. Their use of cameras bothers me for different reasons, but I'm glad to fan the flames.

os2warpman 1y ago
>I realized it had no other purpose but to foist an impression of my dirty face toward me, conveying my position as a filthy, groveling consumer pestering them with my petty needs. I look at myself and go "damn that's one sexy dude I'm gonna jut out my chin and stand up straight so if anyone looks at this, they fall in love with me". Also, the staff doesn't identify as anything except someone trying to make it through their day.
- eth0up 1y ago
  I think a bit of Peter Principle and role enmeshment is at play here. Halo effect? Moral disengagement? Or perhaps it's truly pure gratitude and warm hearted loyalty for having a job, any job, which our future suggests won't be very common soon. On a more serious note, I don't think it's terribly valid to dismiss these behaviors (Home Despot mug shaming, not zealous employee bots) as nothing more than a fun opportunity to admire one's reflection. It may not by itself be a keystone stride on the path of anomie, but it's a stride indeed and I don't want that kind of society. Maybe you do. Home Depot and Blackrock certainly do. I don't.

ProllyInfamous 1y ago

Home Depot's self-checkouts are using this facial ID to build/maintain their shoplifting database — this tracks thefts by the same person across multiple visits, and is used over time to build up a case against errant self-checkout-ers (i.e. to get them above a theft threshhold, at which point prosecution becomes easier). There is also CCTV AI (whether artificial intelligence, or actually indians) which can intervene with your self-checkout process to "remind" you that you didn't actually scan everything.

JKCalhoun 1y ago
> There is also CCTV AI (whether artificial intelligence, or actually indians) That's a new one. It's clever but I feel guilty having laughed.
- loeg 1y ago
  It's not new. The term dates to at least 2024; probably earlier.
- krunck 1y ago
  Why guilty? The Indians are doing their job that stupid tech companies pay them for. The phrase has nothing to do with Indians but rather with unmasking the "AI washing" done by companies trying to drive up stock prices.
  - ProllyInfamous 1y ago
    ¿Por qué no los dos?
AngryData 1y ago
Im not sure we should allow such premeditated charge stacking, it is just further weaponizing the law and fueling our prison industrial complex for zero gain to society. Who is to say many of those people wouldn't have stopped after being caught and charged the first time? Imagine if cops sat on the side of the road not pulling people over, just recording minor traffic offenses in a file, and then a year or so later drop 10+ charges on a person all at once and turning the collective charges into felony reckless driving charges? People would be outraged and nothing of worth would be gained.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

neilv 1y ago

I'm pretty sick of misguided/enthusiastic Loss Prevention people, and these digital systems amplify their hijinks. The most conspicuous one recently was at one upscale grocery chain within the last year. There was what I took to be a dedicated LP person who seemed to be lurking behind the self-checkouts, to watch me specifically, and I stood there until he went away. Then, as I was checking out, this employee came up behind me and very persistently told me that I hadn't scanned something. Annoyed, I pointed on the screen where it showed I had. His eyes went wide, and he spun around, and quickly hurried away, no apology. If I had to guess, I'd say they didn't code that intervention/confrontation as their mess-up, and I wouldn't be surprised if I still got dinged as suspicious, to cover their butts. We do seem to have a lot of shoplifting here in recent years. And I have even recently seen a street person in a chain pharmacy here, simply tossing boxes of product off the shelves, into a dingy black trash bag, in the middle of the day. Somehow none of the usual employees around. Yet there's often employees moving to stand behind me at that same store, when I use their self-checkout. (Maybe my N95 mask is triggering some association with masked bandits, yet bearded street person with big trash bag full of product makes them think of lovable Santa? But an N95 is a good idea in a pharmacy on a college campus, where the Covid factories that are college students will go when they have symptoms.)

neilv 1y ago
Less relevant, but reminds me of my all-time favorite grocery store LP encounter, near MIT. The chain was running this big promotion with lots of tear-open prize tickets that are either coupons or game board pieces, so I had been visiting often, to buy ramen noodles (one ticket per package!) and I had a small stack of coupons in my wallet. I was checking my coupons for this visit in the middle of a center aisle, and was returning my wallet to my back pocket, when this nice middle-aged probably church-going woman store employee walked up, looked at me, and the "oh!" expression on her face said she was very surprised that I was stealing. She hurried off. When I get to the checkout, this middle-aged guy acting a bit like a drunk comes behind me and boxes me in, by sprawling across both the lane and the conveyor. The young checkout woman says to him, annoyed, "Not you again." The guy strikes up a conversation with me. "That's a nice backpack. ... If I had a backpack like that, people would think I was stealing something." It was an ordinary cheap bare-bones store-branded backpack. He's getting close to illegally detaining me, which would go extremely badly for him. To de-escalate, I do my best folksy code-switching, and pretend not to know what's going on. My hyperobservant mode also kicked in: there was abnormal maneuvers of multiple people from the other side of the checkouts. One young guy coming up with the others, my eyes dark to him, he sees I see him, and for some reason gets a look like he's noping the f right out of whatever is going down, and he spins 180 and quickly walks away. Eventually, this friendly and sensible person, who I took to be the manager on duty, comes up on the other side of the checkout, and we have a friendly conversation about the ticket promotion. I think she immediately realized that I was a good-natured MIT type, not a shoplifter. And I would guess she thought the LP guy was a clown who risks getting the store sued someday.

47282847 1y ago

I make it a point not to use self-checkout systems because I want to support human interaction even if basic, and contribute to jobs for humans. And cash (most self-checkouts here are card-only). I understand it’s a losing battle on all fronts.

moomoo11 1y ago
Don’t you think it’s selfish when a small minority of people hold on to some fading ideals in a world where people are genuinely better off with more efficiency? Like imagine being in the era when electricity was becoming more prevalent and I’m sure some people were complaining about some ideal then as well. That said I do agree that self checkouts should not be using methods beyond what’s reasonably necessary.
- nobody9999 1y ago
  >Don’t you think it’s selfish when a small minority of people hold on to some fading ideals in a world where people are genuinely better off with more efficiency? I'm all for more efficiency. Me fumbling with self-checkout is the opposite of efficiency. What's that? I should learn to do it better? How much would that cost in terms of both time and money? Multiply that by several hundred million, as compared with a few hundred thousand cashiers. You're saying that (x)250,000,000 < (x)500,000, where x = the cost in time and money to become proficient in checking stuff out. Is that correct? If so, your math seems a little off. AFAICT, the only folks who get the benefit of this "efficiency" are the store owners who, instead of paying folks to do the job, makes the customer do it instead. What's that? Those savings are passed along to the customer? Give me even one example of this being the case. I've certainly never seen it.
  - moomoo11 1y ago
    Peak efficiency is having someone else shop for you or just getting things delivered. That's what I do. I only go to whole Foods on Tue for the fun of seeing what’s on sale.

idiomat9000 1y ago

I want to be paid in rebates for working at self checkout.

npteljes 1y ago
The rebate is the privilege of not having to employ a cashier in the process, and I'm not even kidding.
saubeidl 1y ago
Self-checkout means you can do a self-rebate ;)
itake 1y ago
I'm paid in shorter checkout times for working at self checkout.
- ryukoposting 1y ago
  I have yet to encounter a self-checkout system competent enough to actually speed up the experience.
  - mattlondon 1y ago
    The ones without scales are the quickest and generally fast. One queue for 10-12 checkouts etc...its fast unless you get some luddite infront of you who seem to enjoy proving some point to no one about how they can't "work the machine" etc.
  - kube-system 1y ago
    They are individually slow but highly multithreaded. The single cashier that stores hire these days may have a 10% higher clock speed, but their queue length is high.
    - ryukoposting 1y ago
      Sounds like the problem is that we aren't hiring enough cashiers. Using a Kroger self-checkout is tantamount to waterboarding. Hesitate for a quarter of a second before placing your item on the scale? Angry prompt. Put an item on the scanner (which itself is another scale) but it doesn't scan within half a second? Angry prompt. Get three angry prompts? Now you get a fourth angry prompt, except this one can only be dismissed by a staff member, and we've already established that they're few and far between. I've given up on actually bagging my items while checking out. I can't rearrange anything in the bags, or move the bags, without the checkout machine throwing a hissy fit. So no, it's not actually faster, because I have to bag everything after paying for it. It totally breaks the pipeline of the checkout.

black_13 1y ago

[dead]

ndsipa_pomu 1y ago

This is similar to the time that ASDA (in the UK) was accused by a customer of violating the GDPR by using face detection in their self-checkouts. ASDA's statement was that the face detection was for the purpose of preventing theft (GDPR allows exceptions for the purpose of law enforcement) and that the information was not stored or used for any other purpose. https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/nottingham-news/asda-issues-statement-over-claim-8279205 https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/nottingham-news/asda-iss...

dominicrose 1y ago

There's a lot of news recently abouts companies just simply hiding things. Dishonesty seems to be the new normal everywhere. There is no god.

Nextgrid 1y ago
Corporation-on-consumer fraud has effectively always been legal in the US. When a corporation lies for profit and gets caught, it is merely a "mistake" and no criminal charges are filed. Individuals aren't afforded the same privilege.

bob1029 1y ago

I've noticed cameras in the payment terminals at some Kroger stores lately. All checkout lanes, not just self-checkout. Also, the HD nearest me has no fewer than 10 ALPRs in their parking lot. They've made absolutely sure that you're gonna get into the database.

unwind 1y ago
ALPR = Automatic License-Plate Recognition [1] for those not familiar with the acronym. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number-plate_recogni...
- mnw21cam 1y ago
  The more conventional acronym is ANPR.
  - kube-system 1y ago
    Whatever is more conventional depends on the convention for whatever the plate is called in the respective location.

saubeidl 1y ago

I am of the firm opinion that if big corps want to outsource their labor to me, the customer, then it is my right to treat myself to a few free items here and there as compensation for the work being done. If you don't want that to happen, give cashiers their jobs back, you greedy bastards.

dahcryn 1y ago
your compensation is speed, you get to go home faster. Is that not enough?
- Loughla 1y ago
  I have never experienced a faster checkout with self checkout. If it's super fast, it's just for a few items, and a cashier would've been just as fast. If it's for a lot of items, there's a decent chance I have to look up some codes or something; which a cashier is better and faster at. The trade off of self checkout is cost savings for the business. These savings are not passed on to me. Therefore, I don't give a flying rat's ass about them. I'm with OP. If I'm working for the business, they will compensate me. Willingly or unwillingly.
  - PhilipRoman 1y ago
    IME it's faster because the queue is shorter. You can fit about 2.5 self checkout machines in the same space, enabling more people to checkout in parallel.
- kube-system 1y ago
  I don't condone theft... but I do remember a day before self checkouts existed, and stores had to hire enough cashiers to be faster than their competitors. Those dozens of checkout lanes at the front of big-box stores weren't always decorative, they used to all be staffed during busy periods.
  - saubeidl 1y ago
    Yup, the speed has not gotten better, it's just that it's on me to be speedy as opposed to somebody that gets paid for it. It's a lousy deal for everyone except the business.

pilingual 1y ago

Don't people dodge these cameras? When I used a credit card at home depot self checkout I was asked if I wanted to have the receipt sent to a specific email address I entered previously online. Creepy. So I started using cash only. Last year I went to get some low voltage wire. I walked for several aisles in both directions to find someone to open the cage. Not a soul. So I reached behind the cage and pulled it out, went to self checkout, began paying with cash. The machine said it couldn't issue change and to see an associate. Seemed odd as it was early in the day. Associate casually went to another register and got me change. When I went to my car (parked far away of course) there was a police car hanging out right next to it. Nothing further happened, but all too coincidental. I discovered a smaller local hardware store and go there. The employees constantly ask you if you need help which is the complete opposite of home depot. Under no circumstance will I shop at Home Depot again. (And, today I drove by that HD and noticed they installed multiple ALPR.)

nmeofthestate 1y ago
>When I went to my car (parked far away of course) there was a police car hanging out right next to it. Nothing further happened, but all too coincidental. I think you're being paranoid.
- pilingual 1y ago
  The location where my car was parked was remote. There is no explanation for the proximity of his idling vehicle.
  - prawn 1y ago
    The remote parts of the car park are usually where the least desirable sorts hang out. (I park in the same areas due to an oversized vehicle, so notice them.) I also think you're being paranoid.
    - pilingual 1y ago
      Paranoia is irrelevant. The design of Home Depot is unwelcoming. In contrast the local hardware store succeeded in using its employees as both a deterrent to theft and being welcoming to its customers. https://www.securityinformed.com/news/co-855-ga-co-1753-ga.20.html https://www.securityinformed.com/news/co-855-ga-co-1753-ga.2...

mattlondon 1y ago

The people at the checkouts are typically not the ones stealing things. There is a bit of a spate here in the UK where just walk in, literally empty shelves into bags and walk out. Some security guards or assistants try to intervene, but apparently some security guards (e.g. ones at apple stores) are told not to try and intervene so really what's the point? The plot twist for this though is that the police are increasingly using "facial recognition vans" to spot people walking around in town centers and apprehending them for thefts from stores, sometimes months previously since they have CCTV footage of them doing it. One hopes there is more evidence than just a hit on the facial ID database as we all know how inaccurate and biased they can be.

dahcryn 1y ago
you'd be surprised how many people steal small valuable items and hide it by doing normal shopping and having a normal shopping cart for their other items. That expensive 30 dollar bottle of shampoo for example, in the handbag, and just checkout the other items like normal. I worked at a place where we could easily track people through the store. Not ID them, but if at any point we clicked on a person, and we could see from entering the store until exiting the store everywhere they passed. shoplifting is super easy to prove after the fact, just hard to do whilst they are still in the store
- ryandrake 1y ago
  So, we're talking a 30 dollar bottle of shampoo vs. people walking in, dumping the whole shelf into a trash bag and walking out. And yet we're putting all this technology, surveillance and loss prevention staff in place to catch the shampoo guy rather than trash bag man.

doctor_radium 1y ago

Maybe the plaintiff is fishing, but this is the reason I never abandoned my Covid mask after the pandemic. You want to string up cameras like Christmas lights? I can wear a mask! What ticks me off more is WalMart and some grocery stores putting monitors over certain aisles, to show you're being monitored. I'll sometimes flip them off. Aldi really annoyed me by showing live video on the self checkout screen with the notice "Monitoring In Progress". Then I realized Walmart and many others have a camera notch on their monitors, too, so perhaps I should thank Aldi for at least being honest? Anybody using facial recognition or similar may know me very well by now. I'm the guy in the mask who flips them off.

JosephRedfern 1y ago
> live video on the self checkout screen with the notice "Monitoring In Progress" That really winds me up too - it shows such contempt for legitimate customers.
aembleton 1y ago
They've still got your gait analysis.
- stogot 1y ago
  Wear different size shoes and put them on the wrong foot. Your brain will be struggling to have a consistent gait
  - cameron_b 1y ago
    be sure to buy such shoes with cash or the Amazon cart ( or CC data ) will lead back to you.
  - Maximus9000 1y ago
    This might fool the gait analysis, but they will come up with more metrics to analyze you by. You can't beat it. IMO, the only way to stop this is government

MagicMoonlight 1y ago

I'm fine with that, shoplifters are scum. I don't see the point in campaigning against things like this, because it only protects bad people. If the government wants to get you, they won't use home depot to do it, they'll just take you from your house or shoot you in the street. If they want to spy on you, they'll break into your house and put microphones under your carpet and cameras in your walls. If we actually had cameras like this everywhere, there would be so much less crime. Instead of the drug addict robbing twenty shops a day, they'd be arrested in the second shop.

kevin_thibedeau 1y ago

The trick is to shop at a high-shrinkage Home Depot where their self-checkout stations are all staffed by cashiers and you get concierge escort service whenever you purchase something locked in a cage.

CGMthrowaway 1y ago
I almost always prefer a staffed checkout vs. self checkout. One time at the grocery store I watched a cashier clock out, shop for herself, then check out at the self checkout (!). I wonder if she recognized the irony.

Wowhappyfun 1y ago

[flagged]

jimt1234 1y ago

Looks like I need to start dressing like an ICE agent before I do any shopping. Ugh.

arminiusreturns 1y ago

I wonder if it is image only or using IR - my anti IR sunshades will prevent the latter from working...

andrewmcwatters 1y ago

Secretly? They show you they're recording your face. They don't point the cameras at both the scanner and your face simultaneously. Anyone rubbing two brain cells together could deduce that they're using facial recognition.

Bluescreenbuddy 1y ago

Illinois is going to bend them over if it turns out to be true.