Comment by crazygringo
2 days ago
> 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.
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-...
I havent been seeing any stores prosecute theft in a long time.
How many stores did you see prosecute theft before that "long time" ?
~ from Examining Court Processing of Shoplifting Before and After the Passage of Mississippi House Bill 585 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...
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> 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.
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.
At least Trader Joe's does not have surveillance cameras (at all). https://dan.bulwinkle.net/blog/trader-joes-does-not-have-sur...
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-...
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.
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> 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.
If only this was the only use and the data wasn't sold/used against people not committing crimes.
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.
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Was that in the article?
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>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/federa... [1]
[1] See the bottom of the page for links to most US state laws.
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-shoplifter...
- https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/11/organized-retail-crime-nine-...
- https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/12/30/new-in-2025-cracking-down-...
- https://www.davisfirmllc.com/blog/the-retail-theft-aggregati...
- https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024/monica...
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It makes a whole lot of sense, otherwise there is a loophole for unlimited stealing as Police/DAs do not want to waste time on misdemeanor theft.
Also, you don't want to criminalize the person who stole one small thing vs serial shoplifter.
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Trade Joe's maybe I could see but how did Whole Foods make this list?
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
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...
[1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data-security/walm...
[2] https://caseguard.com/articles/retail-corporation-walmart-fa...
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.
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.
> it thought I was trying to steal something and replayed video of the scan where it thought I scanned one time and bagged multiple.
Kroger had this too, which made every shopping trip take dramatically longer because the employees would already take 5-10 minutes to come over when they didn't have to reset every self-checkout every other item.
I refuse to shop anywhere that has them. We already have to deal with the constant "Please place item in the bagging area. Unexpected item in the bagging area.", why do we need extra aggravation when it's only going to slightly slow down a very specific class of shoplifter?
They could also be hanging obvious decoys to lure the criminal-prone to action that the real, better hidden, ones capture
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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Whole Foods by me has a palm scanner, and the Amazon Fresh store does biometrics too (at least it used to?
The Whole Foods palm scanner is optional, though. I've never seen anyone use it.
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
Police in my city are quite happy to lock people up for shoplifting. Random stores still lock up the majority of their inventory. I’m not sure how much that’s correlated.
Arresting literally anyone except the repeat offenders that make the media would be a good start. It’s a joke right now
Kind of a strange stance from someone with the name "monero-xmr". If scanning everyone's face for the purpose of going after petty crimes is justified, why shouldn't it be illegal to use monero for the purpose of going after other crimes?
Your [popular on HN] anti-crypto crusade doesn't make this a logical comparison.
XMR is not illegal to use or own, shoplifting is.
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These stores should just convert to a 19th century retail model and not allow customers to enter the stockroom.
You may also see stores revert to the 20th century model of having the mafia serve as private security. One reason they were so successful in some areas is that they were less corrupt and more responsive than the police.
The bad thing about mafia enforcement is you don’t get civil rights. Oh, and if the mob boss wants a favor then you’re going to have to oblige, even if it puts you at risk.
If police and DAs don’t take their jobs seriously, this is what they are inviting back into society.
That model also makes online shopping and delivery services easier to implement. I guess the issue is how labor intensive it is though. Instead of replacing cashiers with self checkout stands it goes in the opposite direction.
See that’s exactly the type of thing I want to avoid. I would like to get back to a normal world where stealing is wrong and police arrest thieves
So Costco?
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Or they could continue taking a small % of loss, remain wildly profitable and not abuse people.
Make the rest of us pay 7% more so thieves can loot businesses and avoid getting a real job? How about no
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-ret...
Your argument - esp the 'blue cities' bit given that the majority of metro(polis) cities in the US could be called blue (minus Miami, Houston, Dallas)- feels slanted.
OP your post was "if you dont like face scanning don't shop there" because shops need face scanning to stop crime.
However your next comment was that cops don't help. Here's the thing. They have a pretty terrible track record of help in any city including red ones. Have you called after having a fender bender on the highway in any state? Near a city, the answer is "no public property or third party damaged? exchange info yourself". Despite this they have been well-funded in the last few election cycles and this does not depend on the party elected.
How about when an iphone gets stolen, or all the people using airtags to track their luggage? The private sector also does a so/so to shit job of helping you. Apple will let you find your phone, but its up to you to go get it, or wipe and restart.
Tracking and storing all of my info and my face does not make the cops more effective at their jobs or prioritize this shop owner you know. Tracking and storing my info and face, doesn't help the shop keeper.
It does however, seem that all this tracking of my info results in my information getting leaked time and time and again. Meaning that I've gone for a shop and somehow the probability of something being stolen from me goes up
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
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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.
I don't doubt that the biometrics analytics dystopia is coming, but shoplifting is a huge issue in some areas. Biometrics surveillance still sucks, but I'll believe it is about theft at this time.
Do facial recognition systems actually reduce or prevent shoplifting by any significant amount? Most shops in my non-us area will have a no approach policy, call the police and report it, but most offenders are presumably habitual.
No, it’s the shoplifting. Don’t be obtuse.
Wow yes your fact based argument has changed my opinion. Praise be.
Screw you over, how, exactly?
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.
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.
Region / time of day / per-demographic brand-popularity based pricing for a start?
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