8 ms·

> Switch to stores with stronger privacy policies: Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and Food Bazaar have not announced biometric scanning. Just because they haven't

> Switch to stores with stronger privacy policies: Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and Food Bazaar have not announced biometric scanning. Just because they haven't announced it doesn't mean they're not using it. Honestly, I would just assume every grocery store has security cameras doing facial recognition to cross-reference and catch repeat shoplifters. All those security cameras are there for a reason.

heavyset_go 10mo ago
> Honestly, I would just assume every grocery store has security cameras doing facial recognition to cross-reference and catch repeat shoplifters. This is their purpose, they're used to build cases over time, instead of single instances of petty theft, until shoplifters can be charged with felonies when the cumulative amount that they stole reaches felony levels. I know of at least one chain that uses them to flag certain people to loss prevention or security when they enter the store, either because of shoplifting or because they were trespassed in the past.
- beached_whale 10mo ago
  If only this was the only use and the data wasn't sold/used against people not committing crimes.
  - heavyset_go 10mo ago
    Yup, that was their initial pitch, now the data is further abused for profit. The data shouldn't exist in the first place, and neither should surveilled society.
    - beached_whale 10mo ago
      I don't think people grasp how much control over how they are viewed by the business/government world they lost/have. Also, dynamic pricing is a pleasant sounding name for price gouging.
  - mlrtime 10mo ago
    Was that in the article?
    - beached_whale 10mo ago
      It's a misuse of the data collected
- nobody9999 10mo ago
  >This is their purpose, they're used to build cases over time, instead of single instances of petty theft, until shoplifters can be charged with felonies when the cumulative amount that they stole reaches felony levels. I've heard the idea of combining multiple misdemeanor thefts to make a felony. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Wouldn't that require an ongoing criminal conspiracy/enterprise to "combine" such disparate acts into a single, chargeable crime? Some state laws do "upgrade" crimes, both misdemeanor --> felony and felony --> more serious felony based on prior convictions, but not (AFAIK) with multiple separate acts whose aggregate value is greater than the cutoff between petty theft and grand theft. What's more, it's the local prosecutor who decides what charges to bring against someone accused of shoplifting, not the "Loss Prevention" team at a store or its corporate parent. The idea just seems unlike how local/state laws and justice systems work in the US. I could be (and likely am) wrong about this, but I've been unable to find state laws[0] which specify that multiple, separate acts of shoplifting can be combined into a single grand theft felony. Would you share which states have such laws? It would be much appreciated! [0] https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/crime-penalties/federal/shoplifting.htm https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/crime-penalties/federa... [1] [1] See the bottom of the page for links to most US state laws.
  - heavyset_go 10mo ago
    There's aggregation laws that allow shoplifting incidents to be added up to a total charge. Also, consider someone stealing small amounts over a year from a single store, a chain of stores or a group of stores with the same owners. The victims in these cases are the same entity. That said, the trend in my area is for business owners to share data about accused shoplifters, help law enforcement with investigations, etc. I would not be surprised if they're all using a platform to do this these days. See also: - https://legalclarity.org/do-stores-build-cases-on-shoplifters/ https://legalclarity.org/do-stores-build-cases-on-shoplifter... - https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/11/organized-retail-crime-nine-states-pass-laws-to-crack-down-on-theft.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/11/organized-retail-crime-nine-... - https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/12/30/new-in-2025-cracking-down-on-retail-theft-and-property-crime/ https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/12/30/new-in-2025-cracking-down-... - https://www.davisfirmllc.com/blog/the-retail-theft-aggregation-trap-how-one-arrest-could-lead-to-multiple-indictable-charges-in-nj/ https://www.davisfirmllc.com/blog/the-retail-theft-aggregati... - https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/monica-r-martinez/new-york-adopts-legislation-fight-organized-shop https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/monica...
hsbauauvhabzb 10mo ago
Repeat shoplifters? Please that’s a thinly veiled excuse, the actual reason is so they can build more accurate analytical models to screw you over more.
- gowld 10mo ago
  Screw you over, how, exactly?
  - hsbauauvhabzb 10mo ago
    Region / time of day / per-demographic brand-popularity based pricing for a start?
    - sublinear 10mo ago
      Juice is not worth the squeeze if the customers who spend more shop online.
      - fc417fc802 10mo ago
        You think online retailers don't do these things?
        hsbauauvhabzb 10mo ago
        Brick and mortar do it too.
  - seb1204 10mo ago
    I'm sure you can imagine some dark patterns. Screens that show you products they want you to buy based on your patterns. Discounted offers tailored to you that are not really discounts.
  - edgineer 10mo ago
    There are arguments about how companies will use collected data in undesirable ways. But I wish that the stress of living in a panopticon would be argument enough.
monero-xmr 10mo ago
I would prefer they require face scanning vs. locking everything up. The police in my city don’t arrest people for shoplifting, or a range of petty crimes for that matter. If you don’t like face scanning no one makes you shop there. When crime is unpunished and the police won’t do anything and the politicians don’t care, then businesses either have to adapt with new models or close
- pempem 10mo ago
  This is a false either/or. It has been proven and reproven that these claims of crime requiring store shutdowns were improperly put forward, without research, by a lobby. So much so that it was covered in mainstream media. December 2023: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-14/column-retail-lobby-confesses-it-lied-about-organized-shoplifting-rings https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-14/column-ret...
  - monero-xmr 10mo ago
    I’m friends with the manager of my neighborhood convenience store and he is extremely angry that he has shoplifting caught on tape, trespassed people, begged and pleaded with the police but they won’t do anything. I’m not sure if you actually know anyone operating a retail store but it’s pretty grim in the blue cities
    - mcphage 10mo ago
      You really need to figure out how to get the police to do their job.
    - Terr_ 10mo ago
      The symptoms you're describing don't seem to match the proposed treatment. Police: "You've caught them red-handed on camera, but we're very busy and we don't care. Or perhaps this is a place where we're deliberately doing-nothing as a revenge or pressure-tactic against local politicians." Shopkeeper: "Ah, but this time I have the camera-footage and fancy biometrics of everyone in the store!" Police: "Oh, well why didn't you say so? That completely changes things, we're always willing to help out a fellow biometrics fan."
Rebelgecko 10mo ago
Whole Foods by me has a palm scanner, and the Amazon Fresh store does biometrics too (at least it used to?
- gs17 10mo ago
  The Whole Foods palm scanner is optional, though. I've never seen anyone use it.
dashundchen 10mo ago
> Switch to stores with stronger privacy policies: Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and Food Bazaar have not announced biometric scanning. Local member owned food co-ops would be a good alternative if there's one near you. They don't have to be fancy and expensive. My local co-op strives to offer affordable options on most staples and bulk foods, and frequently undercuts the chains (including Wegmans) on produce, especially local produce when they can source it. Do they have 20 types of chips and 300 cereals? No, but I can shop in a 20-30 minutes instead of the hour minimum Wegmans demands.
- zippyman55 10mo ago
  It recently dawned on me the cognitive simplicity of selecting a smaller store like the co-op. At our local one, the employees are really nice and selections really easy. I have not yet moved over, but I can see a lot of advantages.
mattacular 10mo ago
Trade Joe's maybe I could see but how did Whole Foods make this list?
pilingual 10mo ago
At least Trader Joe's does not have surveillance cameras (at all). https://dan.bulwinkle.net/blog/trader-joes-does-not-have-surveillance-cameras/ https://dan.bulwinkle.net/blog/trader-joes-does-not-have-sur...
- crazygringo 10mo ago
  They don't... except when they do: > "We trust our customers and do not conduct surveillance on them. When necessary, we take appropriate action, including having security cameras and security guards in our stores, to help ensure the safety of our customers and Crew Members," the company said. https://abc7.com/post/trader-joes-targeted-in-7-socal-armed-robberies/3391702/ https://abc7.com/post/trader-joes-targeted-in-7-socal-armed-...
  - pilingual 10mo ago
    That was in 2018 and it seems in 2024 they still do not have cameras. New locations I've seen do not either. I wouldn't be surprised if they weighed the cost of installing and maintaining cameras and the cost of "a string of robberies" and determined cameras were more expensive.
    - xgkickt 10mo ago
      I'd imagine that at most [e: of their] stores the loss from theft is less than that of spoiled goods.
lovich 10mo ago
You could always go to a Walmart and look up to see if they bothered to even wire the cameras or if the plug was literally dangling from the cameras over the entire store. Happened at the expansion at the one I worked at and the shoplifters went ham for a while after they figured that out
- WaitWaitWha 10mo ago
  Unfortunatelly this is incorrect. Do not be fooled by the decoys. They do it to customers, employees, and contractors. Walmart was sued [0] for exactly what Wegmans just started in 2022, Walmart is sued [1] by delivery drivers, and, so on. [0] https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/privacy/bipa/walmart-class-action-alleges-retailer-illegally-collects-stores-uses-customer-biometric-data/ https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/privacy/bipa... [1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data-security/walmart-accused-of-violating-delivery-drivers-biometric-privacy https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data-security/walm... [2] https://caseguard.com/articles/retail-corporation-walmart-facing-new-lawsuit-in-illinois/ https://caseguard.com/articles/retail-corporation-walmart-fa...
  - lovich 10mo ago
    Seems like it’s changed in the decades. I watched the same guy steal 100s of dollars of shit over a few months. The store I worked at was also a shitshow that barely operated so maybe I was just in their local minimum.
- vlovich123 10mo ago
  They could also be hanging obvious decoys to lure the criminal-prone to action that the real, better hidden, ones capture
- m4ck_ 10mo ago
  Walmart is deep in surveillance tech. The store I worked at now has TV screens near the cash registers showing off their tracking (live camera feed with those tracking boxes or whatever drawn around people.) Once when I was using self check out, it thought I was trying to steal something and replayed video of the scan where it thought I scanned one time and bagged multiple.
roywiggins 10mo ago
If they're collecting biometric data without posting a sign they are breaking the law, that requirement to post a sign is why this story about Wegmans is public at all, Wegmans posted signs as required. If they are, and aren't posting signs, that would be a story in itself. Of course it could still be happening, it sounds like the law is fairly toothless, but it did get Wegmans to post the sign, so probably not useless. https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-wegmans-is-storing-biometric-data-on-shoppers-eyes-voices-and-faces https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-wegmans-is-storing-biometric-...
- trinsic2 10mo ago
  I havent been seeing any stores prosecute theft in a long time.
  - defrost 10mo ago
    How many stores did you see prosecute theft before that "long time" ? Each year, there are over a million arrests for shoplifting in the United States (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2019), ~ from Examining Court Processing of Shoplifting Before and After the Passage of Mississippi House Bill 585 https://ccjls.scholasticahq.com/article/9910.pdf https://ccjls.scholasticahq.com/article/9910.pdf See also Myth vs. Reality: Trends in Retail Theft (2024) https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myth-vs-reality-trends-retail-theft https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myth...
    - mlrtime 10mo ago
      To be fair to OP I didn't see people come in and blatantly steal items and walk out as if there were no consequiences. In NYC before Covid, I never saw it. After, many many times.
      - crazygringo 10mo ago
        A major point of facial recognition is to generate those consequences. You don't have to try to physically stop them the moment they walk out, when there isn't time to call the police and you don't want a cashier getting physically involved and there's no security officer at the moment. You have the evidence, and can call the cops the next time they enter the store.
themafia 10mo ago
> I would just assume every grocery store Every large chain does. > All those security cameras are there for a reason. To show you that they can afford them. As if cameras are a reasonable way to stop shoplifting in the first place.
- crazygringo 10mo ago
  > As if cameras are a reasonable way to stop shoplifting in the first place. How are they not? They're pretty essentially both for catching a lot of shoplifting in the first place, as well as providing evidence in court.
  - PenguinCoder 10mo ago
    Exactly. Its only useful after the fact. I he shoplifting has already occurred. Cameras do not stop shoplifts. It creates a record after the fact.
    - BizarroLand 10mo ago
      They serve as a deterrent for "honest" thieves. Knowing you are being recorded prevents many crimes. Not all crimes. But many crimes.

heavyset_go 10mo ago

> Honestly, I would just assume every grocery store has security cameras doing facial recognition to cross-reference and catch repeat shoplifters. This is their purpose, they're used to build cases over time, instead of single instances of petty theft, until shoplifters can be charged with felonies when the cumulative amount that they stole reaches felony levels. I know of at least one chain that uses them to flag certain people to loss prevention or security when they enter the store, either because of shoplifting or because they were trespassed in the past.

beached_whale 10mo ago
If only this was the only use and the data wasn't sold/used against people not committing crimes.
- heavyset_go 10mo ago
  Yup, that was their initial pitch, now the data is further abused for profit. The data shouldn't exist in the first place, and neither should surveilled society.
  - beached_whale 10mo ago
    I don't think people grasp how much control over how they are viewed by the business/government world they lost/have. Also, dynamic pricing is a pleasant sounding name for price gouging.
- mlrtime 10mo ago
  Was that in the article?
  - beached_whale 10mo ago
    It's a misuse of the data collected
nobody9999 10mo ago
>This is their purpose, they're used to build cases over time, instead of single instances of petty theft, until shoplifters can be charged with felonies when the cumulative amount that they stole reaches felony levels. I've heard the idea of combining multiple misdemeanor thefts to make a felony. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Wouldn't that require an ongoing criminal conspiracy/enterprise to "combine" such disparate acts into a single, chargeable crime? Some state laws do "upgrade" crimes, both misdemeanor --> felony and felony --> more serious felony based on prior convictions, but not (AFAIK) with multiple separate acts whose aggregate value is greater than the cutoff between petty theft and grand theft. What's more, it's the local prosecutor who decides what charges to bring against someone accused of shoplifting, not the "Loss Prevention" team at a store or its corporate parent. The idea just seems unlike how local/state laws and justice systems work in the US. I could be (and likely am) wrong about this, but I've been unable to find state laws[0] which specify that multiple, separate acts of shoplifting can be combined into a single grand theft felony. Would you share which states have such laws? It would be much appreciated! [0] https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/crime-penalties/federal/shoplifting.htm https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/crime-penalties/federa... [1] [1] See the bottom of the page for links to most US state laws.
- heavyset_go 10mo ago
  There's aggregation laws that allow shoplifting incidents to be added up to a total charge. Also, consider someone stealing small amounts over a year from a single store, a chain of stores or a group of stores with the same owners. The victims in these cases are the same entity. That said, the trend in my area is for business owners to share data about accused shoplifters, help law enforcement with investigations, etc. I would not be surprised if they're all using a platform to do this these days. See also: - https://legalclarity.org/do-stores-build-cases-on-shoplifters/ https://legalclarity.org/do-stores-build-cases-on-shoplifter... - https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/11/organized-retail-crime-nine-states-pass-laws-to-crack-down-on-theft.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/11/organized-retail-crime-nine-... - https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/12/30/new-in-2025-cracking-down-on-retail-theft-and-property-crime/ https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/12/30/new-in-2025-cracking-down-... - https://www.davisfirmllc.com/blog/the-retail-theft-aggregation-trap-how-one-arrest-could-lead-to-multiple-indictable-charges-in-nj/ https://www.davisfirmllc.com/blog/the-retail-theft-aggregati... - https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/monica-r-martinez/new-york-adopts-legislation-fight-organized-shop https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/monica...

hsbauauvhabzb 10mo ago

Repeat shoplifters? Please that’s a thinly veiled excuse, the actual reason is so they can build more accurate analytical models to screw you over more.

gowld 10mo ago
Screw you over, how, exactly?
- hsbauauvhabzb 10mo ago
  Region / time of day / per-demographic brand-popularity based pricing for a start?
  - sublinear 10mo ago
    Juice is not worth the squeeze if the customers who spend more shop online.
    - fc417fc802 10mo ago
      You think online retailers don't do these things?
      - hsbauauvhabzb 10mo ago
        Brick and mortar do it too.
- seb1204 10mo ago
  I'm sure you can imagine some dark patterns. Screens that show you products they want you to buy based on your patterns. Discounted offers tailored to you that are not really discounts.
- edgineer 10mo ago
  There are arguments about how companies will use collected data in undesirable ways. But I wish that the stress of living in a panopticon would be argument enough.

monero-xmr 10mo ago

I would prefer they require face scanning vs. locking everything up. The police in my city don’t arrest people for shoplifting, or a range of petty crimes for that matter. If you don’t like face scanning no one makes you shop there. When crime is unpunished and the police won’t do anything and the politicians don’t care, then businesses either have to adapt with new models or close

pempem 10mo ago
This is a false either/or. It has been proven and reproven that these claims of crime requiring store shutdowns were improperly put forward, without research, by a lobby. So much so that it was covered in mainstream media. December 2023: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-14/column-retail-lobby-confesses-it-lied-about-organized-shoplifting-rings https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-14/column-ret...
- monero-xmr 10mo ago
  I’m friends with the manager of my neighborhood convenience store and he is extremely angry that he has shoplifting caught on tape, trespassed people, begged and pleaded with the police but they won’t do anything. I’m not sure if you actually know anyone operating a retail store but it’s pretty grim in the blue cities
  - mcphage 10mo ago
    You really need to figure out how to get the police to do their job.
  - Terr_ 10mo ago
    The symptoms you're describing don't seem to match the proposed treatment. Police: "You've caught them red-handed on camera, but we're very busy and we don't care. Or perhaps this is a place where we're deliberately doing-nothing as a revenge or pressure-tactic against local politicians." Shopkeeper: "Ah, but this time I have the camera-footage and fancy biometrics of everyone in the store!" Police: "Oh, well why didn't you say so? That completely changes things, we're always willing to help out a fellow biometrics fan."

Rebelgecko 10mo ago

Whole Foods by me has a palm scanner, and the Amazon Fresh store does biometrics too (at least it used to?

gs17 10mo ago
The Whole Foods palm scanner is optional, though. I've never seen anyone use it.

dashundchen 10mo ago

> Switch to stores with stronger privacy policies: Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and Food Bazaar have not announced biometric scanning. Local member owned food co-ops would be a good alternative if there's one near you. They don't have to be fancy and expensive. My local co-op strives to offer affordable options on most staples and bulk foods, and frequently undercuts the chains (including Wegmans) on produce, especially local produce when they can source it. Do they have 20 types of chips and 300 cereals? No, but I can shop in a 20-30 minutes instead of the hour minimum Wegmans demands.

zippyman55 10mo ago
It recently dawned on me the cognitive simplicity of selecting a smaller store like the co-op. At our local one, the employees are really nice and selections really easy. I have not yet moved over, but I can see a lot of advantages.

mattacular 10mo ago

Trade Joe's maybe I could see but how did Whole Foods make this list?

pilingual 10mo ago

At least Trader Joe's does not have surveillance cameras (at all). https://dan.bulwinkle.net/blog/trader-joes-does-not-have-surveillance-cameras/ https://dan.bulwinkle.net/blog/trader-joes-does-not-have-sur...

crazygringo 10mo ago
They don't... except when they do: > "We trust our customers and do not conduct surveillance on them. When necessary, we take appropriate action, including having security cameras and security guards in our stores, to help ensure the safety of our customers and Crew Members," the company said. https://abc7.com/post/trader-joes-targeted-in-7-socal-armed-robberies/3391702/ https://abc7.com/post/trader-joes-targeted-in-7-socal-armed-...
- pilingual 10mo ago
  That was in 2018 and it seems in 2024 they still do not have cameras. New locations I've seen do not either. I wouldn't be surprised if they weighed the cost of installing and maintaining cameras and the cost of "a string of robberies" and determined cameras were more expensive.
  - xgkickt 10mo ago
    I'd imagine that at most [e: of their] stores the loss from theft is less than that of spoiled goods.

lovich 10mo ago

You could always go to a Walmart and look up to see if they bothered to even wire the cameras or if the plug was literally dangling from the cameras over the entire store. Happened at the expansion at the one I worked at and the shoplifters went ham for a while after they figured that out

WaitWaitWha 10mo ago
Unfortunatelly this is incorrect. Do not be fooled by the decoys. They do it to customers, employees, and contractors. Walmart was sued [0] for exactly what Wegmans just started in 2022, Walmart is sued [1] by delivery drivers, and, so on. [0] https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/privacy/bipa/walmart-class-action-alleges-retailer-illegally-collects-stores-uses-customer-biometric-data/ https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/privacy/bipa... [1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data-security/walmart-accused-of-violating-delivery-drivers-biometric-privacy https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data-security/walm... [2] https://caseguard.com/articles/retail-corporation-walmart-facing-new-lawsuit-in-illinois/ https://caseguard.com/articles/retail-corporation-walmart-fa...
- lovich 10mo ago
  Seems like it’s changed in the decades. I watched the same guy steal 100s of dollars of shit over a few months. The store I worked at was also a shitshow that barely operated so maybe I was just in their local minimum.
vlovich123 10mo ago
They could also be hanging obvious decoys to lure the criminal-prone to action that the real, better hidden, ones capture
m4ck_ 10mo ago
Walmart is deep in surveillance tech. The store I worked at now has TV screens near the cash registers showing off their tracking (live camera feed with those tracking boxes or whatever drawn around people.) Once when I was using self check out, it thought I was trying to steal something and replayed video of the scan where it thought I scanned one time and bagged multiple.

roywiggins 10mo ago

If they're collecting biometric data without posting a sign they are breaking the law, that requirement to post a sign is why this story about Wegmans is public at all, Wegmans posted signs as required. If they are, and aren't posting signs, that would be a story in itself. Of course it could still be happening, it sounds like the law is fairly toothless, but it did get Wegmans to post the sign, so probably not useless. https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-wegmans-is-storing-biometric-data-on-shoppers-eyes-voices-and-faces https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-wegmans-is-storing-biometric-...

trinsic2 10mo ago
I havent been seeing any stores prosecute theft in a long time.
- defrost 10mo ago
  How many stores did you see prosecute theft before that "long time" ? Each year, there are over a million arrests for shoplifting in the United States (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2019), ~ from Examining Court Processing of Shoplifting Before and After the Passage of Mississippi House Bill 585 https://ccjls.scholasticahq.com/article/9910.pdf https://ccjls.scholasticahq.com/article/9910.pdf See also Myth vs. Reality: Trends in Retail Theft (2024) https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myth-vs-reality-trends-retail-theft https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/myth...
  - mlrtime 10mo ago
    To be fair to OP I didn't see people come in and blatantly steal items and walk out as if there were no consequiences. In NYC before Covid, I never saw it. After, many many times.
    - crazygringo 10mo ago
      A major point of facial recognition is to generate those consequences. You don't have to try to physically stop them the moment they walk out, when there isn't time to call the police and you don't want a cashier getting physically involved and there's no security officer at the moment. You have the evidence, and can call the cops the next time they enter the store.

themafia 10mo ago

> I would just assume every grocery store Every large chain does. > All those security cameras are there for a reason. To show you that they can afford them. As if cameras are a reasonable way to stop shoplifting in the first place.

crazygringo 10mo ago
> As if cameras are a reasonable way to stop shoplifting in the first place. How are they not? They're pretty essentially both for catching a lot of shoplifting in the first place, as well as providing evidence in court.
- PenguinCoder 10mo ago
  Exactly. Its only useful after the fact. I he shoplifting has already occurred. Cameras do not stop shoplifts. It creates a record after the fact.
  - BizarroLand 10mo ago
    They serve as a deterrent for "honest" thieves. Knowing you are being recorded prevents many crimes. Not all crimes. But many crimes.