Big Brother to socially profile every shopper at checkout lines

Big brother style self-service check-outs which socially profile customers to stop shoplifters are in development.
 

Symbol Technologies, a part of Motorola helped develop self-scan checkouts for Tesco and Asda, has lodged a patent for a program which monitors a lot more than your shopping.

For more info. click here.

What a surprise, another American company profiting from spying on everyone with no regard for their rights!

Welcome to the 'Surveillance State' where private companies and security treat every customer like a criminal!
 

The technology takes into account whether the store is located in a bad area; the time of day; shopping history and queue length before determining if it is likely a shopper has stolen items.
 

It claims to maximize the potential for catching shoplifters.

Mondelez International one of the worlds largest snack companies developed a new program called Smart Shelf. The program uses a Kinect, Microsoft's motion-tracking and facial-recognition device, to track shoppers as they look at items.

"Our goal is to understand how shoppers see, scan, spot, show interest and select products from the shelf in the store," said a spokeswoman for Mondelez. "We can also engage and influence the purchase decision by delivering a targeted shopper experience. For example, we can deliver audio or play a video based on demographics, distance and even the time of the day."

Mondelez isn't the first company to experiment with targeted advertising. The EyeSee Mannequin, released by Almax last year, used both cameras and microphones to track how people behaved in department stores. They were also capable of sending data to department stores and retail brands, similar to how Smart Shelf is capable of sending data back to Mondelez.
Big Brother is creeping into stores & shopping malls as some have begun installing equipment that allows them to track customers using their mobile phone signals.

Motorola is spying on customers Wi-Fi phone signals in stores with its new 'MPact Platform for Mobile Marketing' its the first of its kind to offer both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth® Smart technology to engage (spy) with shoppers in the aisle when buying decisions are being made.

The solution enables shoppers to opt-in and receive customized offers and personal assistance via a Bluetooth Smart-triggered loyalty app and access Wi-Fi to locate products in store, read reviews, compare prices and look up information. That's the kicker become a loyal customer and kiss your privacy goodbye!

'Locationing technology translates into relevant discounts and special offers for shoppers as well as attentive service that can enhance the overall in-store experience. MPact offers three levels of location services: Presence, Zone and Position using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Smart to pinpoint the exact location of customer devices in relation to the merchandise they are looking at. The combination of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Smart technology gives insight and visibility to a shopper’s journey in the store while eliminating the need for retailers to deploy, integrate and manage two separate technologies."
More retail stores are spying on your cellphones Wi-Fi signal click here & here to read more.

Recent research  in the UK showed that shoppers are stealing more than £1.6 billion worth of items from supermarkets every year.
Fruit and vegetables are the most likely items to be taken.

One in five people admit stealing items at the checkout, but the results suggest people steal regularly once they realize they can get away with it – the majority admitting they first took goods because they couldn’t work the machines.

Supermarkets have become increasingly vigilant, installing CCTV, weighted bagging areas and attendants at self-service tills.

The new program claims to use ‘a statistical basis’ to determine how likely a shopper is to steal food, although it could only work if the shopper was identified through a store card.

It recommends making more spot checks in stores located in areas with a high risk of theft and on new customers.

“Customers who shop frequently at the store are likely to be more honest and should be audited less,” it suggests.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10812097/Big-Brother-checkouts-could-socially-profile-shoppers.html
http://article.wn.com/view/2013/10/17/Mondelez_International_May_Use_Microsoft_Kinect_to_Track_You/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2082165/Big-Brother-malls-trigger-privacy-row-installing-equipment-spy-shoppers-mobiles.html

Petition: Anti-surveillance movement calls ‘Reset the Net’ day of action


More than 30 civil liberties groups and tech companies have formed a coalition against internet surveillance and NSA spying, with a ‘Reset the Net’ day of action planned for June 5 to mark a year since Edward Snowden’s leaks.

“Don’t ask for your privacy. Take it back,” the website urges.

The site offers the opportunity for its visitors to sign a pledge: “On June 5, I will take strong steps to protect my freedom from government mass surveillance. I expect the services I use to do the same.”

The U.S. Army is spying on Americans using surveillance blimps! The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a FOIA suit, click here to read more.

The coalition has been organized by “Fight for the Future.” Among its members are Reddit, Imgur, DuckDuckGo, CREDO Mobile, and the Free Software Foundation, who are enforced by the civil liberties groups and others, as Boing Boing and Greenpeace.

The collective is calling on software developers to assimilate anti-NSA features into their products, such as mobile apps, or perhaps adding security features such as SSL (Secure Socket Layer), HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security), and Perfect Forward Secrecy which are data encoding features intended to prevent the government being a go-between for communication interceptions.

“The call is simple – find some territory of the internet you can protect from prying eyes,” the ‘Reset the Net’ video states.

“Government spies have a weakness: they can hack anybody, but they can’t hack everybody,” the organizers behind the Reset the Net movement say in a video released. “Folks like the NSA depend on collecting insecure data from tapped fiber. They depend on our mistakes; mistakes we can fix.”

The groups are dispersing a privacy package for participants to use which contain free software tools for encrypting chat logs, email, phone calls and text messaging.

“A year after Snowden’s shocking revelations, the NSA is still spying on innocent Americans without a warrant,” Michael Kieschnick, CEO of CREDO Mobile, told Wired magazine.

“CREDO will continue to demand Congress and the president take action to stop unconstitutional mass warrantless surveillance, and until we win real reform, we will encourage users to adopt encryption tools to protect their personal communications from government abuse of the 1st and 4th amendment,” he added.

“We can’t stop targeted attacks, but we ‘can’ stop mass surveillance by building proven security into the everyday Internet.”
http://www.infowars.com/anti-surveillance-movement-calls-reset-the-net-day-of-action/