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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

This seems easily fixed: just ask the consumer to show a driver license or other accepted ID, with some software validating whether it is legit. It will still be slower than a regular cashier judging your full beard and receding earline, but it would remove most human oversight.

Obviously there is a risk of illegally selling items to minors with fake documents, but I think that's fixable too. Already, in my local UK supermarket there are cameras on each checkout station, which I guess go to some bored reviewer; so you could just alert the guy "hey, customer X gave us a valid license" and assume that he'll react if he can't see a realistic amount of wrinkles.

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Because people will then bitch and moan about how they're being recorded and their PI is being captured. The former is likely already happening, but people would still complain since it would be apparent. Both issues would be ephemeral if it's a human checking it.

As I mentioned, we're already being recorded, so that's not much of an objection.

On PI, I agree that there is a qualitative difference between a cashier and a machine if you assume, as most people do, that the cashier will not remember private details. This can be fixed with industry-wide agreements to not store such data, in the same way as merchants don't store your full credit card details. You could even allow people to bypass the check if a valid identity is registered against their store-issued fidelity card.

Honestly, the only hard problem is localization. At the moment you can sell more or less the same automated till to UK supermarkets, US supermarkets, or EU supermarkets; but document-checking code will have to be heavily localized. Still, EU driving licenses are already similar on the entire continent, and that's quite a critical mass one could hit. I would be surprised if manufacturers weren't already developing this feature.

I use my US Passport for restricted-age item purchases (or ID at a bar), simply because it is not trackable and does not list my location/residence upon it.

Although I'm way beyond the point of caring about demographic profiling, I still don't want my home address to be available to everybody dealing with a simple purchase (although this perspective is probably greatly atypical on account of being a survivor of CSA).

it's not "bitching and moaning" to be concerned about the over collection and exploitation of surveillance capitalism.

This is more a issue with the current legislation rather than a technical one.

But it was the store that decided to pretend I could self-checkout when I actually can't.

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