The Target forensics lab (2024)

[dole]

In 2012, Target operated a "couple of forensics labs" and at least 23 "investigations centers" for surveillance. OP's article kinda sugarcoats it. Since it's been verified Home Depot does checkout facial recognition and builds profiles, silly to think most any other major retailer wouldn't.

https://privacysos.org/blog/target-is-really-really-into-sur...

[echelon]

AI will probably automate this.

I predict a new class of machine learning model that will ingest a large number of low resolution video frames and dump high resolution facial reconstructions.

This stuff will probably be sold to both private and public sectors.

[djoldman]

Probably not in Illinois!

https://www.aclu-il.org/en/campaigns/biometric-information-p...

[sieep]

I have a friend who works for Nordstorm doing this kind of work. She claimed the bigger problem financially is employees in retail, i.e. stealing clothes in large scale to be sold on eBay.

[larkost]

This is a longstanding problem. I worked at the receiving dock of a retailer long ago, and the amount of procedure and double-verification involved was a bit of a drag, all of it obviously aimed at making sure that neither I nor the guy driving the truck could make things "fall off the truck" without it being obvious.

But even then, it was common knowledge that most "shrinkage" (generic term for stolen/damaged/expired/destroyed merchandise) was from employee theft (except in grocery stores... there it is second to expired goods).

[pavel_lishin]

I remember a guy in high school basically taking orders for things to steal off the Walmart truck; expensive electronics (for back in the day) like XBoxes, Playstations, etc.

And of course, while working at Kohl's, you had people occasionally put items away in the back, tucked behind shelves, so that when they went on ultra-clearance they could pull them out and buy them.

[yndoendo]

I have a friend that does this for Home Depot. He describes his job as being a detective. Watching video to collect enough evidence so he can question employees shorting the company. Non-employees has their evidence given to the local police department once there is enough.

Often employees with talk about the other crimes they committed while being interrogated. He just plays along, ".. yes we had that too ... and that too". Give them enough evidence and they will hang themselves.

The hardest to catch are the slight of hand employees that can take money from the safe while it looking like they put all the money in. This is even with cameras watching the safe.

[burkaman]

Yes, keep this in mind when you see corporations pushing news stories about surging epidemics of shoplifting (https://www.foxbusiness.com/retail/former-home-depot-ceo-org...). Shoplifting is not growing, and external theft generally accounts for about a third of retail inventory losses. See for example: https://popular.info/p/lies-damn-lies-and-shoplifting-statis...

[giancarlostoro]

> She claimed the bigger problem financially is employees in retail, i.e. stealing clothes in large scale to be sold on eBay.

One of Kanye's early songs he mentions stealing kakis from his job before he quit to become an artist. Not surprised, if you're an employee you have access to all sorts of things a customer does not. I imagine you also have access to areas where there are no cameras.

[ecshafer]

When I was younger, teen and early 20s, and working in retail. I noticed and thought it was kind of funny how in the job application process, these 100+ question interviews were all about trying to filter out criminals. They really treated employees as potential criminals first. Its ironically more paranoid than working in the financial industry.

[bitmasher9]

Employee theft requires different tactics to fight and doesn’t pose the same consumer privacy concerns.

[red-iron-pine]

biggest threats are insider threats

back when bookstores were a thing most places I used to work in one, and had a manager watch us, the entire time, as we took romance novels we couldn't sell out back and ripped off the covers before tossing them in a ship-back bin. Ditto for a few others like best sellers and some mags

she took two us out back to do it, leaving only one person on the floor to run the checkout -- field day for any serious thief. but they were more worried about us...

[heathrow83829]

i'm surprised by this because it's so hard to sell used goods. i have an old suit from graduation that's in perfect condition and looks quite nice. the thing will NOT sell, not even for 10$, at all even though it's practically brand new.

[kemiller2002]

This shows where their priorities lie. This is also the same company that got hacked and lost credit card data of customers through their HVAC system. Bet nothing has really changed there as far as cyber security goes.

[kotaKat]

A lot has changed on the inside at Target since then. They’ve rolled the whole stack in house (even switching to Linux), locked down, and hardened a lot both inside and out.

I was amused finding out that cashiers basically no longer sign onto the registers using the register. They sign onto a myDevice (a Zebra handheld) elsewhere and keep it with them, then use that to scan a rotating PDF417 on screen on the register to complete signon as a 2FA device.

That’s on top of a lot of built in POS restrictions now to limit where certain transactions (like gift card functions) are completable to avoid people trying to swipe devices or signons from outer area unattended registers.

[lotsofpulp]

Every retail business has a “priority” of preventing theft. When profit margins are 2%, it doesn’t take much theft to put the business in the red.

[tencentshill]

At lease they have a vulnerability disclosure program. https://security.target.com/vdp/

[odie5533]

How much forensic-grade surveillance profiling is an acceptable amount while I peruse deodorants and potato chips?

[Avshalom]

You can't peruse the deodorant, we have it locked up.

[barbazoo]

It's just so obvious at this point to see the wealth building up on one side and the technology that is necessary to protect it and wealth completely disappearing on the other, making people steal the deodorant in the first place.

I can't believe there isn't a society or couldn't be one where all this shenanigans isn't necessary.

[bj85]

TFA is a just a poor summary of an improperly cited 2009 forbes article. A somewhat recent article with additional information here https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-08-25/how-targe...

[OptionOfT]

When I moved to the USA I always thought it was interesting in how many ways you can just walk out a store without paying.

I'm from Belgium, and at least where I grew up at, the stores are much more corralled. One way in, one way out.

But this forensics is also why I don't use self-checkout. Not that I steal stuff, but I don't want to end up in a situation where I forgot to scan something and get in trouble.

I've had it happen to me that something was missed at Costco, you just walk back and pay.

[iamnothere]

Do Belgian fire codes not mandate multiple exits? One problem I have sometimes seen here is people running out of a fire exit, even if they set off an alarm in the process. And you can’t block or lock those exits.

[alangibson]

It's funny to see Reddit posts driving HN posts. There was a viral post about a rather video friendly lady getting politely arrested for shoplifting at Target going around today.

A surprising number of people commented about how Target had made sure they got long sentences by waiting and recording them until they would get serious charges.

[Operyl]

Target does tend to build cases, up to a certain point, so as to not waste LE time. But it’s not as much as people tend to think. If you steal a candy bar or a loaf of bread it’s just not worth it, but more? A TV? Yes.

[doctorpangloss]

people are reading this article misunderstanding that its purpose is to discourage theft by getting nerds to constantly talk about Target this, felony theft that, not by actually being effective at a technical level

[euroderf]

Can't someone juice this conversation with some false/misleading advice for retailers, so that after it goes thru an A.I., the A.I.'s advice for retail operations makes shoplifting and employee theft easy and simple ?

[carverauto]

so does walmart, have had one for a long time

[cm2012]

This is why Target self check out is the best. They have confidence in their theft deterrence so their machine has a lot of leeway and yells at me less for weight issues.

[JohnFen]

If I were confident that I wouldn't mistakenly be accused of theft, I might use self-checkout. But I'm not, so I don't.

[odie5533]

How much do they pay you to work as a cashier there?

[hackable_sand]

Friendly reminder that Target is still on the boycott list.

[loeg]

"Huston"? This does not bode well for the writing/editing process at whatever site this is.

[dang]

"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."

(Typos / spelling mistakes certainly fit this category)

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[dylan604]

Not quite phonetically, but spelled as pronounced? I'd assume we're talking about Space City in Texas vs the street in NY pronounced like a house that weighs a ton.

[jollyllama]

We have a problem.

[reify]

looks like the lowly shoplifter is going to bring down capitalism.

All that theft! no more profits. fuck me.

All major businesses have insurance to cover all losses from internal and external theft. Those same lossses are tax right-offs. in other words, the amount of money lost to shoplifting is less money they pay in tax.

I wonder of all the cctv, facial recognition and monitoring costs work out more than the actual shoplifted losses.

there is more to meet the eye than a lowly shoplifter here.

[wtcactus]

This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where Kramer sends Jerry’s broken video player in the mail to claim the postal service broke it and get money for it.

“It’s a write off Jerry. It costs them nothing. They just write it off!”

Of course that Kramer also didn’t had any idea of what a “write off” was. He was also just throwing words around to justify theft.