Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by derefr | Hacker News Reader

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Humans won’t detain anyone, but probably in the future there will be mechanistic countermeasures — e.g. the doors of the store just not opening for shoplifters (or at all, while shoplifters continue to be present — to prevent shoplifters from sneaking in ahead/behind a non-blacklisted customer.)

Unmanned stores in the Amazon Go mould are already switching from turnstiles to airlock-style entryways; these can easily recognize and deny shoplifters access. (Never mind that these stores also usually have some form of positive identification, e.g. a card tap or hand-print scan being required to enter; so it’d really just be a matter of blacklisting the account associated with your credential.)

There’s no reason that manned stores couldn’t adopt these more-strict entry access systems as well; manned stores just haven’t invested in such technology yet, because they don’t need it in the way unmanned stores do (where an unmanned store without an entry-access system could literally experience 100% “shrinkage”, if someone decided to back a truck up and start loading.)

Alternately, the facial recognition could just trigger a phonecall; which, combined with a simple policy that any car belonging to a shoplifter has no right to park in the lot, would mean that such cars would have a tow called on them the second the shoplifter gets out of their car and walks into view of a camera. This wouldn’t work in most of the world, but in the car-centered US, I could see it being a very effective deterrent.

People might realize that comparing these systems to a prison isn't hyperbole when the doors won't open.

They don't lock you in. The point of an entry-access system is to gate entry, not exit.

To get in, you need to register a credit card. The store observes what you take, and charges that credit card for those items when you leave. If you're inside, you've necessarily given them everything they need to charge you asynchronously for everything you take while you're there. You can leave at any time.

The point of entry-access is to prevent people who don't have a registered active credit card from coming into the store, and so walking away with things that the store cannot then charge to anyone's account.

> the doors of the store just not opening for shoplifters (or at all, while shoplifters continue to be present — to prevent shoplifters from sneaking in ahead/behind a non-blacklisted customer.)

This is illegal in my state. And, I'm guessing, in most other US states as well.

Do you mean that denying entry is illegal, or denying exit is?

Because these unmanned stores do let you leave; they just have separate entry and exit doors, which have mutual-exclusion locking (like an airlock) such that nobody can enter the store through the exit door by getting someone inside the store to open the inner door. (You could slip into the little individual exit hall through the outer exit door; but the inner door in the little exit hall would remain locked until you left and it detected there were no longer people in the hall. Presuming a high-traffic store, this also wouldn't hold anything up, as other customers would continue to exit through the bank of other exit halls to either side of you.)

I haven't checked, but presumably pulling a fire alarm inside the store would disable all this security, flinging both the entry and exit doors open. But you can't reach the fire alarm in the exit hall; it's not "inside" the store. The only thing you can do in the exit hall, is exit (which you are always free to do.)

I mean that locking the doors so occupants can't exit is illegal.

I recently saw a viral video of a seagull shoplifting a bag of chips. The automatic doors didn't open for the seagull, so the bird just waited until a permitted human approached the door.

A "mantrap" entrance (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantrap_(access_control) ) could solve this, but I think many stores don't have the space for it. That 7-11 doesn't. Also, neither the cops nor the towing company will show up in time to do anything about it.

Thank you; a mantrap was exactly what I was trying to describe in my other comments, but didn't know the word for it.

It's not true that a 7-11 doesn't have room for a mantrap; remember that an unmanned store doesn't have a cash register / checkout counter, or any space behind such for a person to stand. A manned store could be retrofitted into a secure unmanned store by installing the mantrap entrance into exactly that area.

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