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Kmart's use of facial recognition to tackle refund fraud unlawful
- SirFatty 1y agoWhat's more surprising is that Kmart still exists...
- lemonteaau 1y agotoo cheap to die
- tech234a 1y agoThis is Australia
- SirFatty 1y agoYes, I saw that in the article. What's your point, that if in Australia it's not real?
- carefulfungi 1y agoI was curious so read the Kmart wikipedia article over morning coffee. Seems like these (no longer) share any ownership with the original. Which I guess raises a philosophical question about names and existence that will require at least a second cup of coffee :-)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- bombcar 1y agoto be fair, Australia does kind of seem like a made up place with made up animals
- eej71 1y agoKmart in Australia is best thought of as a fork from the original. The original in the United States is effectively defunct now.
- bombcar 1y agoThis is more common than you’d think - often subsidiaries are distinct enough that the Canadian or Australian version survives the US parent’s bankruptcy. And sometimes it’s just a different store that licensed the name for 100 years.
- eej71 1y agoMy other favorite example of this is the A&W Restaurants which in the states was a bit more of a fast food establishment. It was never that successful, but you'd see them every so often. Gone now in the states, but I believe its Canadian successor is still going strong.
- natebc 1y agoThere's still quite a few A&W restaurants around in the US though they are rareish. https://awrestaurants.com/locations-list/ https://awrestaurants.com/locations-list/ 400+ according to their wikipedia entry.
- bombcar 1y agoA&W is exceptionally rural now, and I'm not 100% sure why - it's a weird combination of fast food (drive thru) + waitress/sit down ordering that doesn't really exist anywhere else (kind of how there are a few carhop/drive UP restaurants that still exist).
- lupusreal 1y agoThe Canadian A&Ws are very good as far as fast food burger joints go. The American version is quite shitty though, last time I saw one years ago.
- hopelite 1y agoEven more astonishing to me is that we’ve not just simply allowed something like ubiquitous camera surveillance and facial recognition, increasingly with effectively 100% coverage, but most people have actively participated in it with all their various cameras they even installed inside their home, let alone set up neighborhood surveillance systems. And yes, they are all tapped and not even Orwell imagined what we’ve done to ourselves. But don’t worry, it will only get more apparent and worse once things are far beyond too late, when Minority Report will be noted for its cute and naive depiction.
- spicyusername 1y agoOrwell never imagined that the surveillance data would be worth so much money or that every single technological advancement could only be accessed once one agreed to surrender all of their privacy.
- hodgehog11 1y agoAs an Australian, I can say that Kmart here is an absolute powerhouse. They sell highly curated goods made in China for very cheap, it's a dream for young people on a budget. Poor delivery services here pushes people toward brick and mortar stores too.
- onetokeoverthe 1y ago[dead]
- nenenejej 1y agoAmazon is not too strong in Australia in terms of variety or price. So kmart is great and free delivery over a small amount makes it convenient.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ha-shine 1y agoKmart in Australia is pretty good to be fair. Cheap goods with good enough quality. I put them above Temu or Shein. For toys or pet accessories, they are unmatched in price anywhere else.
- Gigachad 1y agoFor stuff like cups, power boards, tooth brush holders, etc they are basically the best. The furniture is pretty garbage though and not really that cheap compared to something much better at ikea.
- nenenejej 1y agoMy house is full of kmart dog toys. I keep forgetting we got them there as they are good quality. It's a place you get everything, fairly cheap but good quality for the price. Notwithstanding TFA.
- zenmac 1y agoYeah remember a decade or two ago they filed bankruptcy. Guess that is the wonders of Chapter 13 bankruptcy law in USA. And thanks to obfuscation of owner ship for corporations, god knows who owns them now.
- nl 1y agoKmart in Australia has been owned by Coles Australia since 1978, and since 1994 has had no association with the US Kmart. It's very successful in Australia.
- darylteo 1y agoAdditional, Australia has a Target that isn't at all related to Target US. Which also now owned by the same owners of Kmart (Coles Group, now owned by Wesfarmers). And both Kmart and Target Australia operations have merged (though still operating 2 separate brands)
- JackFr 1y agoWoolworths too!
- avsteele 1y agoInteresting line to draw: - you can record all manner of video in your store... - but you can't process it in this particular way.
- Forgeties79 1y agoFirst paragraphs pretty clearly read to me like the issue isn’t “processing it,” it’s the indiscriminate filming of everybody who enters the store without consent that’s the problem.
- llm_nerd 1y agoEveryone who enters almost any store is "filmed" with their implicit consent. Cameras are everywhere, and certainly are everywhere in every Australian court as well. The root comment is precisely right. Deriving data from filmed content -- the illusory private biometric data that we are leaving everywhere, constantly -- is what the purported transgression was.
- Forgeties79 1y agoVery well could be that I am misreading it.
- mrits 1y agoIs this from the 90s? Who doesn't expect to be recorded when entering a retail chain? How the hell does the government have the right to decide what this private company can do on their private land? If you enter onto someone else's property you should play by their rules.
- Ylpertnodi 1y ago>Who doesn't expect to be recorded when entering a retail chain? Me. Unless it's clearly stated outside. It's why I wear a covid mask when shopping.
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- _qua 1y agoI get the desire to limit data collection, but banning tech that deters and punishes crime is bad policy.
- kijjure 1y ago[flagged]
- delfinom 1y agoI can't tell if this brain rot statement is sarcasm or not. If technology is identifying a real trend, that isn't due to some training bias in the machine learning, then it is a real trend. And in this case, Kmart is not targeting individuals based on race as a result, simply refusing refunds on individuals identified.
- salawat 1y agoWhen was the last time someone cracked open their data pipeline for you? Besides which, the existence of mathwashing should have every intellectually responsible person on the side of placing the burden of proof w.r.t. fitness for purpose on the deployers of a suspect system.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- honeybadger1 1y agowho said anything about race
- singular_atomic 1y agobot reply
- billy99k 1y ago[flagged]
- whstl 1y ago> no real way The commissioner found this to not be the case. From the article: "There were other less privacy intrusive methods available to Kmart to address refund fraud."
- jbellis 1y agothis sounds like wishful thinking to me
- oldjim798 1y agoI don't want large corporations to have security or protection from retail fraud. Stealing from big box stores is a victimless crime.
- honeybadger1 1y agoit's a pretty similar comparison to racial fairness groups pushing to get cops to have cameras and now they are pushing to have to not release the footage publicly because fear of racial bias.
- nla 1y agoGood to see Kmart back in action.
- coreyzzp 1y agoDo you believe it? I once had to use facial recognition at a train station to get free toilet paper, which was labeled for "environmental protection," avoiding waste of paper. At that time, I was in pain and urgently had to sell my face just for a piece of toilet paper
- siva7 1y agoJust take toilet paper all the time with you. Saves me the stress from having to think about if a public toilet has some.
- stronglikedan 1y ago[flagged]
- trymas 1y ago…unless you have any bowel affecting disease/syndrome or you are travelling and you have neither regular eating schedule, nor full control of your diet…
- geodel 1y agoAgree. My simple advice is: Don't be full of shit when leaving home.
- jermaustin1 1y agoDoesn't everyone do a colonic before they leave their house?
- genewitch 1y agofellas, did you know that women generally use toilet paper, even if they are regular? this is the comment and reply chain that actually dispelled HN's charm for me.
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- 4ndr3vv 1y agoSounds like the tech wasn't deployed for "Refund Fraud" (it would be easier to just use facial recognition when a refund was made) but instead deployed across all stores to see what they could do with the data. I'd be very surprised if refund fraud was the only POC that this facial recognition data was used for.
- darylteo 1y agoEither their CISO was shut out of the decision making, the SLT decided it was a risk worth taking, or their CISO was absolutely asleep at the wheel.
- contravariant 1y agoOf course, but fraud/theft prevention is easier to defend legally. There are exceptions for exactly those use cases.
- scotty79 1y ago> I'd be very surprised if refund fraud was the only POC that this facial recognition data was used for. The only conceivably legal POC.
- bko 1y agoI heard stories about how super advanced invasive surveillance let's people like Target know that you're pregnant before you actually know yourself. But I just don't buy it. I get insane advertisements, even from places like YouTube that know me well. I get advertisements for Bumble featuring what looks like a teenage boy telling me you'll never know what you'll find on Bumble, which is weird considering I'm a married straight dude. Sometimes I even get ads in different languages. If the most advanced ad network can't figure out the language that I speak, I'm less worried about Kmart doing some nefarious profiling based on my stride. I like technology that targets fraud, because I like living in a high trust society. I'm annoyed that people abuse the system and that's why we can't have nice things. You could probably just target the worst 1% and basically go back to deodorants not being locked away behind glass.
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- darylteo 1y agoThe main judgement here seems to be: not everyone was there to get a refund, therefore, just entering the store is not an opt-in consent to biometric scans. As a counter-example: Australian clubbing venues use facial recognition and id verification to identify banned individuals and detect fake documentation. This is required on condition of entry (therefore, opt-in), and this information is shared across all partner venues. https://scantek.com/facial-biometric-matching-technology-scantek/id-verification-venue-entry/ https://scantek.com/facial-biometric-matching-technology-sca...
- silexia 1y agoCrazy. Seems like a good application, but there is lots of potential for abuse.
- fsckboy 1y agonightclubs want lots of customers especially attractive women, and don't want lots of problems. What's the potential for abuse? Detecting your attractiveness or ethnicity in order to turn you away would be abuses, but is that what you are thinking of or alleging? because if it's just facial recognition, they don't have an incentive to misidentify people
- nemomarx 1y agoif anything is stored, "we know you were at this night club at this time" is pretty sensitive information? depending on the kind of club.
- shermantanktop 1y agoThis is indiscriminate data collection. Some of the risk comes from the correlation with other sources of data by LEO with overly broad access to fine grained data. Big Brother is not watching you. Instead, thousands of Little Brothers are patiently watching their little corner of the world, recording license plates, logging phone locations, tracking credit card usage. Big Brother doesn’t need to see you, he just asks them to tell him what he wants to know.
- byyoung3 1y agoThis is the problem with America
- stronglikedan 1y agoSource?
- onionisafruit 1y agoAustralia
- syngrog66 1y agoKmart exists?
- benchloftbrunch 1y agoIn Australia, apparently
- tiahura 1y agoThe paranoia around being seen feels a lot like the other reptile-brain based phobias like fear of poisoning with vaccines.
- ahoneybun 1y agoKmart is still a thing? I haven't seen one in the US in YEARS.
- mcflubbins 1y agoSAME, what the heck. I know there's one in GUAM of all places...
- jezzamon 1y agoAs mentioned in other comments, they're effectively a different store in Australia
- josefritzishere 1y agoAny company that does this should have mandatory facial recognition AI cameras in the baord room. That's where the real crime is happening.
- supertrope 1y agoDrug tests too.
- RShackleford 1y ago[dead]
- declan_roberts 1y agoWe're living in state of anarcho-tyranny. The state is totally unable to stop shoplifters, so companies are increasingly relying on odious technology to handle the problem themselves, which is in turn denied. The result is we're going to all get punished for it. Increasingly we're going to see a return policy that is less and less flexible until one day it is eliminated altogether.
- j_w 1y agoI'm not sure that I would agree with the claim that the state is unable to stop shoplifters. The case here was Australia, but speaking to the United States: You can't really do anything about shoplifting until after it happens. It's not a crime until it's been committed, then you can prosecute. The issue is there is a base level cost to do so, and it's going to take a very large amount of shoplifting to balance that. We as a society have basically accepted that certain crimes don't go punished, and it seems like low value shoplifting largely fits that category. In turn, large companies have decided that they will instead collect data on their own until they have enough to make it a high value issue, with proof. Then the state will prosecute. The issue here is that companies do not get to illegally collect data, they still would have to do so within the bounds of the law. So what are those bounds? We say the Government can surveil us with impunity, but only for terrorism or whatever else gets brought under that umbrella. For "petty" crimes the government would need permission to collect the amount of data that these companies are and then build their case with that. This isn't to say that shoplifting is okay, just that society doesn't seem to care all that much. Our reaction to companies taking actions like these will also show how much we seem to care about them as well. Spoiler on that last one: we don't seem to care (in the US).
- Der_Einzige 1y agoWe could pass laws that allow and encourage security officers at grocery stores to get physical to stop shoplifting. Arm them too. That's what Trump/MAGA america wants. They want to see some dude who steal stuff get shot for their crime. They will gleeful cheer it on.
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- drob518 1y agoWho else but me is surprised that Kmart still exists somewhere?