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Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

In basically every retail store, and especially grocery/convenience stores, you are being observed by security cameras at literally every second. In every aisle.

This has been the case for decades. It's how they catch shoplifters.

I rather like the fact it can be used for customer convenience now, rather than just punitively.

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I was on a jury for larceny from a Target. The footage they showed from so many points around the store made me feel creeped out with every store I go into now.

Larceny goes to a jury where you live?

It's a criminal charge, so yes, according to the Sixth Amendment it could go to a jury trial in any jurisdiction.

Maybe I've been living in California for too long, but I'm kind of shocked/confused at how someone stealing from a Target would go all the way to a jury trial. Surely the amount stolen was less than the cost of the police's time, the legal system, judges, attorneys, clerks, jurors, and so on. It would be more cost effective to simply have the local government reimburse Target for the loss.

That's not really how criminal justice works. If someone murders you, no money is lost. They aren't trying to figure out who killed you so they'll pay what you would have paid in taxes. They investigate and prosecute murders to discourage murder.

The same is mostly true for every crime. If you steal something of value and the insurance company gets reimbursed, that's just a bonus.

In CA, it's not shoplifting but rather "grand theft" after $950. Based on [1], target tracks you throughout the "shoplifting" to accumulate total losses and only goes after you once you hit "grand theft", where presumably the cost/benefit works out in their favor.

This lines up with what I've heard on TikTok and from in person conversations with kleptomaniacs. (It's not uncommon for folks to go on thieving sprees throughout a mall. They think they're getting off scott-free, but are being secretly followed by security. Once they hit $950 the big guns come out.)

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35031393

Preventing crime isn't about cost-effectiveness in individual instances, it's about deterrence. Which is necessary for safety, but which is also "cost-effective" when you account for all the crime that has been deterred, if you tried to measure that in dollars somehow.

But people also have rights, including the right to a trial with a jury of peers. Innocent people can be wrongly accused of stealing large amounts. It's worth the expense of a jury trial to force the prosecution to justify their case and give the innocent the change to defend themselves. And cost effectiveness plays no role here.

I guess you mean in any jurisdiction in the US. Where I live, jury trials are for the highest level of crimes (the translation would be felony I guess).

I'm not sure this clarification is necessary as we're in a discussion about NYC, on a US-based website, and the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution obviously applies within the US but not to other countries.

Value of the stolen goods exceeded a certain amount (I think it was $3k) so it went to a trial.

Target has a very impressive security system. There is a uuid on your receipt that can be used to track your movement within the store beginning from when you walked in

They also have a top forensic lab that some smaller law enforcement units rely on, and they do it for free!

https://corporate.target.com/article/2012/02/an-unexpected-c...

Target's procedure is that they don't bother with small shoplifters, but they track the value of the items stolen. Once you hit the felony limit, they go into action and provide all the evidence to law enforcement.

I don’t think this is true.

In high school my friend was caught and arrested for stealing a bottle of luxury cosmetic shampoo (dumb teenager brain). Not cheap but certainly not felony limit

They track how much you've shoplifted over time and once it hits felony level amounts, then they charge you. From the below articles:

> "[If] you take a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff, they're gonna be like 'Bye gorgeous. You have a great day.'"

> However, the self-identified ex-employee said that there is a catch - if the shoplifting becomes a pattern, Target allegedly takes action, as they track stolen items.

> Hannah claimed that the company waits "until you're thousands and thousands of dollars in debt" to "put you behind bars."

> This would generally make the stealing a felony-level charge.

https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/target-thefts-shoplifti...

https://www.the-sun.com/news/6797941/target-employee-theft-s...

That’s exactly what happened in the jury case I was on. They waited until the person had stolen a large amount of goods before pressing charges.

One example of this from a quick search: https://privacysos.org/blog/target-is-really-really-into-sur...

More information on some of Target's loss prevention techniques: https://www.businessinsider.com/target-employees-say-store-d... (Archive link: https://archive.is/wRol8)

I'd heard that they wait until losses reach above the felony threshold before prosecuting, documenting what particular individuals are stealing. Several videos about this had gone viral, and I'd heard about it from a friend but never looked into it until now.

From the Business Insider interview with several anonymous employees, though, the intent of the surveillance is more to catch high volume thieves, employees stealing, and career shoplifters, rather than folks stealing a few necessities. I could see most of their prosecutions rising to the felony threshold because of this tactic, since high volume is likely to cross the dollar amount for a felony. In other words, the intent is not being punitive for the sake of it, but actual loss prevention.

I tend to believe the anonymous sources, because they have nothing to gain from talking anonymously with the reporter, versus the influencers who are trying to accumulate followers. It's not a Les Miserables type situation.

A lot of the commenters on one particular video linked from the article seem to be pro-shoplifting, even without need, so there is to some extent people believing what they want to believe: https://www.tiktok.com/@jodessy/video/6899962247590743301

Examples:

"All I'm hearing is I have $499 in store credit" - 1700 likes

"I'm sorry but what?? I've stolen CELL PHONES from target" - 242 likes

"I def stole over $20k including but not limited to laptops, jbl speakers, ... only got probation so jokes on them!" - 103 likes

Anyway, I just thought I'd share this even though it's only tangentially related to the story since I'd just previously believed the viral rumor without really looking into it.

The constant filming from every angle is what makes me even more confused when you need to personally tell employees that something is broken somewhere, or the queue for the cash register is miles long, or some sales point isn't staffed and has people waiting. Everything is being watched, why aren't they reacting proactively?

Large corporations assign people roles. The person watching the cameras is there to detect shoplifting. They have no stake in the success of the store.

If you want to see a shopkeeper care about that sort of thing, patronize an owner-operated small business.

I don't know about small, but the store I usually shop at is owner-operated (though part of a owner-coop in Germany), but they don't do it.

I get the point of shoplifting watchers not caring about queues, but am I just naive that this should be easy enough to solve with tech? You have lots of images from multiple directions, you know how the store looks empty, you can probably do a decent-enough image discovery to find out roughly where people are. If there are 15 people in front of the checkout, ring a small bell somewhere and have a person check whether it's time to open another checkout.

I can shop, scan the products while I walk through the shop with my phone, pay with the app and open a gate to bet let out with my purchased goods, but the computer can't use the camera signal to figure out how where people are?

The tech is redundant. The people working in the store can see with their eyes how long the queue is. They don't need a machine to ring a bell. They have a brain.

But not an incentive to use it.

Because the person watching is performing a specific task, not every task.

Cameras film, people watch. They're not willing to pay more cashiers, they're certainly not willing to pay a bunch of people to stare at cameras all day. Instead it's zero, one or two people. They have enough on their plate just virtually following visually suspicious people through the store.

edit: I include zero because a lot of it is seeing that a "suspicious type" has entered the store, and running to the back room to watch their every move until they leave.

If you go into one of the Amazon grocery stores there's cameras literally every foot, possibly less. Way more than a traditional grocery store.

I don't know what exactly Amazon is trying to do though. Their prices aren't competitive and the "don't mess around with checking out" benefits aren't exactly a huge time saver, self checkout is a solved problem and doesn't take a ton of time.

Not being able to immediately see your receipt on exit is also a big downside - they charged me for something I put back on the shelf which makes me not want to go there either, I need to remember to check my receipt at some unknown later point in time and try to match it up with stuff that has probably already been put away.

All around IMO it's a worse grocery store to go to.

In typical stores (e.g. Walmart, Target, etc), most of those cameras housings don't contain cameras.

The main issue isn't that cameras are expensive, it is that monitoring that many cameras is expensive/impractical, and automated theft detection systems are still in their infancy. So they just target high value/common areas, and rely on deterrents (like people believing they have a lot of cameras, off-duty cops at the door, and PR around some super secret new technology).

Quite seriously: Stores really need to look into vending machines for certain items. In particular with how advanced Gift Card Theft-Clone-Return Activation fraud is. Thieves have message-boards not dissimilar to this where they can share "pro-tips," and things have become quite sophisticated.

> most of those cameras housings don't contain cameras

Do you have a source for that?

Because at my local grocery store for example, above the customer service area they have a whole wall of TV's showing the live camera feeds. They're all working.

My local convenience store has the live TV's too, by the cashier.

That’s not evidence that all the camera housings are populated. You’re only seeing the ones with live feeds.

> Do you have a source for that?

I know people who work there.

Your average Walmart has hundreds of camera housings. Every single aisle has a couple. The amount of cabling alone to populate them all simply doesn't exist (as you can often see, it is an open-box ceiling), and monitoring that many cameras is impractical (in particular for a store staffed at BARELY sustainable levels).

Just look at how understaffed the floor of these stores are, then ask yourself why they'd have a disproportionate number of loss-prevention staff working relative to the floor staff. A big store absolutely will have tens of cameras, but even all those may only have a single person for all (or zero persons depending on shifts/staffing).

That being said: Some stores have legitimately rolled out facial recognition to pick up known thieves as they enter the store. But that requires four-ish cameras and the technology is pretty turn-key.

> monitoring that many cameras is impractical

Regardless of how many there are, I believe the point is not to monitor them live but to have recordings if the store wants to bring charges for something.

There are systems to follow the subject. I configured my work’s cameras to show a few key cameras on the live feed, but several more are quietly recording. When we review the footage, I can follow a subject across my entire array of cameras. I can track someone from the point they enter the parking lot with a plate camera.

I had facial recognition in a nightclub over a decade ago. Modern cameras’ capabilities are scary.

> Because at my local grocery store for example, above the customer service area they have a whole wall of TV's showing the live camera feeds.

Right, but is it recording, and does the camera feed go anywhere other than just up to the little monitor showing you the video?

It's like the recording they play once in a while over the PA that says "security to section 3" or whatever. It's theater. Because actual security costs real money and grocery stores are tight margins.

I mostly ignore such things, but Home Depot annoys me. I guess they have a more significant problem with theft, because some aisles have cameras with monitors and a bell that goes DING-DONG when you walk by, just to remind you they think you're a criminal. A few miles away there's even a Home Depot that has a portable tower-of-cameras out in the parking lot with bright lights and flashing blue lights on it, so you can further feel like a criminal. Luckily my local location doesn't feel the need to do that.

From what I've read of Amazon Go's technology, literally every square inch of ceiling in them is occupied by some piece of technology to implement the cashierless checkout.

> In particular with how advanced Gift Card Theft-Clone-Return Activation fraud is

Completely self-inflicted problem, happy to see such schadenfreude unfold. There's already a gift card that's pretty much immune to fraud (or at the very least makes fraud the bank's problem): money.

Gift cards are horrible waste and scam and ultimately only benefit the store at the expense of the buyer or the recipient of the card - you're turning good, actual cash, in something that's less valuable because now it has usage restrictions on them.

And yet everything is now behind locked glass at the pharmacy. I doubt the cameras are that good at catching shoplifters.

There's a tipping point where it's cheaper to employ staff to get stuff out of a cabinet than to catch all the people stealing.

Sure, but it's very strange when that threshhold seems to be in the $2-4 range.

Some US cities, you show up for a conference or something, walk to the corner store across from your hotel, and find that all of the toothbrushes and bags of trail mix are locked away.

How little are they paying these people who are doing the unlocking, that it's worthwhile for such small items?

I'd speculate they are doing some balance of what gets stolen the most, and price. But I'm in the UK and I mostly see higher priced items like brand name razor blades getting locked away.

You recently shopped at the Seattle Target by the market, too?

The liability equation is massively different on the pharmacy side where there are strict penalties involved with distributing controlled OTC meds even, let alone prescriptions and controlled prescriptions.

Nobody is going to come down and slap a fine on you for having a dozen cameras stolen. They very certainly will if that cough syrup wasn’t distributed correctly.

The kinds of things that are locked up aren't even OTC meds that could be used for illicit purposes. We're talking about antacids and COVID tests too.

If they already lock up regulated medicine, then it costs them next to nothing to add high-value items to it. They have the space and the staff to handle it already.

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