The people building this stuff need to think through what they’re doing.
Imagine this is wildly successful and most stores adopt it. Does someone with shoplifting on their record get banned from buying groceries everywhere? What if the government provides a list of undesirables to exclude from society?
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Please don’t create the Torment Nexus.
Without condoning this, I think it’s important to be very clear about what this is: it’s an automation improvement to a decades-old existing system. Most retail stores already keep (and share!) photos of suspected shoplifters, with the work being done by printing screenshots from security camera footage. The goal is to discourage them from shoplifting by constantly having an employee nearby, and to only kick them out if they’re caught in the act. Personally, I don’t think increased surveillance is a worthwhile use of resources, and I think it could lead to abuses like you’ve described, but from the POV of the people building this, they’re taking an existing labor-intensive task and making it easier. From their perspective, it’s easy to argue that this won’t lead to blanket bans and lists of undesirables because those could already exist, but they don't.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 21.9 ms ] threadImagine this is wildly successful and most stores adopt it. Does someone with shoplifting on their record get banned from buying groceries everywhere? What if the government provides a list of undesirables to exclude from society?
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Please don’t create the Torment Nexus.