We were in our local Target store yesterday. My wife purchased some OTC cough syrup, the self check out register wanted an employee for confirmation she was the proper age. (We're in our sixty's.) Instead of just looking at her driver's license, he used his handheld device to scan the license! I would never allow this, myself.

> While stores often implement the technology to help curtail shoplifting, lawmakers and advocates are worried that it will be repurposed for profiling customers and adjusting prices based on information gathered.

Worried? With the web of 3rd party services that are somehow involved in the delivery of any cloud service, with all their different privacy policies that apply with carefully crafted legalese, hosted in different jurisdictions. Combined with that juicy data, the New Oil that fuels surveillance capitalism. Unless somehow watertight guarantees are provided, it is more realistic to assume widespread abuse is commonplace, and work from there.

Is it to curtail shoplifting or is the main benefit selling the data ?

If they wanted to curtail shoplifting they could employ more staff.

I have a friend whose nearest grocery store is surrounded by Flock "safety" cameras. The police and security in the retail or grocery stores regularly share data and logins, and this extends across multiple states. He says it's been brought up in mundane traffic court and affected his ability to enroll his children into schools. Not only that, but his ability to seek legal guidance is hindered since the state can easily produce suspicious evidence on a whim against him.

It seems like anyone with even a cursory role can access this information and abuse it. It's ridiculous that this is happening. I think a sizable number of people on Hacker News actually support these systems and if you're one of them, please keep yourself safe.

I don’t know how that would work. Some states mandate that if the displayed price is different, the customer should be charged the lower price.

In order to read their tale about surveillance, Politico tells you to "SIGN IN".

They want you to give them your email, employer's name and your job title.

Is this some kind of joke?

Or are these people actually that stupid?

At some point we have to realize that all of these super intrusive tech implementations are downstream from devolving into a low trust society. The reason we have to do this in the first place is because we are electing to not put the people who abuse these goods in prison. That’s a choice we are making. The trade off is additional overhead and risk on police and prosecutorial misconduct vs vast state and corporate surveillance apparatus. Pick your poison but choose wisely.

We already lost at the airports. Not shocking :(

Maybe they can facial recognize my disgust with their musak selection and vax commercials playing at 150% volume.

Shops are making extremely feeble efforts to curtail theft such that I think it's a nice cover for raising prices, slashing costs and increasing data capitalism etc

For example at a local Asda, an expensive donut brand are placed right by the entrance. I see people stealing them all the time. At Gregg's bakery, many popular items are left on a table half way to the door, almost inviting theft. Other expensive items are put in the chiller/hot cabinet open to all.

It's been so obvious what changes need to be made, you ask yourself why they have not

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