Attention shoppers: what you should know about video surveillance

While you’re buying this years gifts and gadgets, another kind of industry is at work all around you. Retail surveillance studies consumers, monitors employees, breaks up crime rings, and allows stores to share your data with one another (Via LoopZilla).

It’s December, and the frenzy of the shopping season that started at midnight on Thanksgiving is culminating on the last weekend before Christmas. But while you and five hundred of your closest friends are standing in endless lines at the checkout counters, stores are busy fighting their perpetual battle against theft. MySecuritySign.com recently investigated the trends driving the retail surveillance industry, talked to experts in the field, and pulled together their findings in an article: Going Shopping? 7 need-to-know facts about retail surveillance. Some of the things they discovered might surprise you.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that while shoplifting gets a lot of national attention, it’s actually less of a problem than employee theft. The National Retail Federation estimated that of the 28.3 billion lost in revenue last year to theft (that’s over seven million iPad minis), 57% can be attributed to employees.

Shoplifting happens in the stockroom, too. (Via MySecuritySign.com)

It makes sense; employees have ample opportunity to interact with the merchandise, particularly in stock rooms and during shipment arrivals. However, anyone considering giving themselves a five-fingered discount should be careful; loss prevention teams are well aware of the propensity for employee theft and they can review hours and hours of increasingly digitized and high-definition video to catch a suspected culprit.

MySecuritySign.com spoke to a supermarket owner in Brooklyn. Much of the time, he’s reviewing the tapes to make sure employees are behaving properly and not mishandling the merchandise, so it’s not just theft they’re looking for, either. Employees should shelve like someone’s watching, because someone might be.

Another insight the experts brought to the table? Well, you and I might be used to seeing signs everywhere reminding us we’re being filmed, but the professional thieves couldn’t care less. MySecuritySign.com conducted a fascinating interview with King Rogers, a loss prevention specialist with decades of experience, who told them that the signs are there as a courtesy to the customer, to remind them that the store is serious about security. “Thieves are going to steal anyway,” he said, “they don’t believe in signs.” But many retailers want to give the strongest case for legal defense possible, he says, and signs are one way to make the customers feel secure in the knowledge that any kind of incident – including one where they might be the victim – will be recorded.

The message couldn’t be less subtle, but do thieves really care? (Via MySecuritySign.com)

Perhaps it’s not that surprising to the sharp observer that they’re being sharply observed; it’s estimated that in 2012, there are over 10 million surveillance cameras in stores alone, and that’s not counting transportation hubs and industrial facilities. But while we’ve all made our peace with Big Brother, cameras are starting to get smarter. Just this year, we’ve been hearing about facial recognition technology (FRT), and how the sometimes-buggy software that matches faces to a stored database of images is getting faster and more accurate. High-quality facial recognition software could eventually help stores catch known criminals more quickly, particularly through growing partnerships to law enforcement and cooperation with other retailers.

At the moment, not too many retail stores are necessarily implementing FRT into their security plans. MySecuritySign.com spoke to Steve Reed, the Director of Security at Arden Fair Mall in Sacramento, and he cautioned that while he has to do everything he can to prevent and prosecute theft, “I also have to walk a fine line not to give the appearance of Big Brother.” But stores might start to get less cautious as the technology improves; already, there are rumblings about an Italian company who’ve developed a high-tech clothes mannequin that can “spy” on shoppers, just as much to study their browsing habits as their shoplifting tendencies.

Could these mannequins be watching you, and keeping track of what you buy? (Image used via Creative Commons from Lisa Brewster)

And this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the billion-dollar industry of loss prevention, all built around the many ways that stores lose revenue to theft and the evolving tricks of the trade designed to curtail the crime. “The bad guys stay up later than we do”, Rogers told MySecuritySign.com, “figuring out ways to circumvent the techniques that we spent all day designing and perfecting.” To find out more about the retail surveillance happening all around you, you’ll just have to read the article.

-K. Cavouras