Facial Recognition
Industry Milestone - National Acceptance
Major News Outlets Come Out in Support of Public Safety Benefits

New York Times

NYC "Bringing Policing to the Modern Age"
"Facial Recognition: Dawn of Dystopia, or Just the New Fingerprint?
Facial recognition technology raises fears of a dystopian surveillance state, with vanishing privacy and a high potential for abuse. Such concerns led San Francisco this week to ban any use of facial recognition by the police and other city agencies.

But it is also a powerful and efficient tool that, much like DNA analysis, offers a way to bring policing into the modern age and help catch wrongdoers or solve crimes that have gone cold.

It has been used to arrest men accused of child sex abuse, including a fugitive who had fled to Nepal and a man in Oklahoma who had been at large for two decades. It has helped nab a trio of jewel thief suspects and people who the authorities said were trying to enter the country under fake names.

But since the San Francisco ban, several agencies have come forward to argue that it is counterproductive to forbid any use of what they call a valuable tool that generates investigative leads.

But there are no national guidelines for how facial recognition should be used. Private companies may offer to run images against photographs collected from more disparate sources, like social media.

The technology has been most effective in solving property crimes, like package thefts, pulling images from video doorbells and surveillance cameras, he said. the sheriff’s office has used it for cases ranging from “murder to shoplifting and in between.” nytimes.com

Editor's Note: To a certain extent this NY Times article came out in support of its public safety use with a valid concern towards the need to establish national guidelines. As the entire industry itself has all agreed it's needed.

The biggest point here being that this is the first time we've seen a traditionally left leaning international leading news outlet clearly supporting the technology and its public safety benefits.  A real first step towards its inevitable acceptance and usage.

Also of special note here is that Peter Trepp, CEO of FaceFirst, is really the first industry leader in that space to author a book on the subject and take such a strong position on the need for regulations and privacy guidelines. Reassuring the retailers that their organization's culture is grounded in leading the industry in best practices and standards.

This is the article senior management across North America should read as it represents an industry milestone. Just a thought Gus Downing
 

Bloomberg

Don’t Ban Facial-Recognition Technology. Regulate It
Concerns are understandable. But with rules in place, the benefits will far outweigh the risks.

San Francisco, long a vanguard of digital enlightenment, has just made a regressive mistake. This week, it became the first major city to prohibit its police force and government agencies from using facial-recognition technology.

Such a ban has an understandable appeal. Concerns about facial recognition are widespread among the public. In just a few years, the technology has advanced at a startling rate. Other countries are using it to repress their citizens, while Americans are accustomed to anonymity in public spaces. Abuses — accidental and otherwise — are all too easy to envision.

Simply banning the technology, though, is the wrong response to these worries.

The fact is, properly used, facial-recognition tools are a boon for governments and citizens alike. In some places, they’ve been deployed to protect borders and other vulnerable sites. In others, they’re helping to fight sex trafficking and find missing children. Police use them to identify suspects, track down fugitives, and speed up investigations. Last year, authorities used the technology to quickly identify the perpetrator in a horrific mass shooting in Maryland.

Down the road, the public benefits could be even more pronounced. It has great potential for improving public health. As the software improves, its benefits should only expand.

The question, then, is what further rules are needed to maximize the benefits of this technology while minimizing harm.

Access to such data should be limited to clearly defined purposes and subject to regular audits.

A set of federal standards for guarding against bias. With testing and certifying such systems would help.

Like all new technologies, facial recognition can be used for good or for ill. Regulating its use in the private sector will be equally challenging, if not more so. But it’s up to policymakers to strike the right balance. Simply banning a tool with so much promise amounts to an abdication of that responsibility — and threatens to let fear stand in the way of real progress. bloomberg.com

CNBC

How US companies stack up in AI Facial Recognition
In January a study compiled by the UN World Intellectual Property Organization found that China and the U.S. both dominate the AI industry, with both countries leading in patents and academic research. Tech giant IBM has the largest AI patent portfolio, with 8,920 patents, ahead of Microsoft with 5,930.

Yet with respect to facial recognition, there have been more than 900 facial recognition patents filed in China — almost 10 times more than the number of patents filed in the U.S., according to data analysts CB Insights.

Through advances in artificial intelligence, facial recognition is expanding beyond law enforcement and into other sectors. Retailers across the country are integrating facial recognition technology into cameras to estimate a customer’s age, gender or mood so stores can target them with ads on in-store video screens; banks are relying on facial recognition software to improve security and eliminate fraud.

Peter Trepp is CEO of California-based FaceFirst, a facial recognition software platform that works with law enforcement and across several industries, including transportation and retail, to prevent theft, violence and fraud. He believes that software providers have to be vigilant about security at all times.

In his book “The new rules of consumer privacy: Building loyalty with connected consumers in the age of face recognition and AI,” he says, “We can’t pretend that it is 1974, or even 2014. We have entered a new era that demands a new set of rules for both companies and customers.” cnbc.com

 

#MeToo Backlash
Sad survey: 60% of male managers are “uncomfortable” working around women
LeanIn.org and SurveyMonkey just released the results of a survey on the state of men and women interacting in the workplace in the age of #MeToo. The results are frustrating. The data reveals that 60% of male managers say they are uncomfortable performing common workplace activities such as mentoring, working one on one, or socializing with a woman. That’s a 32% increase over last year.

To add insult to insult, senior-level men who were surveyed are now far more hesitant to spend time with junior female colleagues than junior male ones, across a range of basic work activities. The men were 12 times more likely to hesitate to have one-on-one meetings, nine times more likely to hesitate to travel with a junior woman for work, and six times more likely to hesitate to have a work dinner with a junior woman.


That means the many, many women in this world who are just trying to do their jobs and make progress in their careers are being stymied by men who are terrified of being, I dunno, unable to control themselves while talking to a woman in the conference room. It’s an infuriating addition to the challenges that women already face in the workplace.

While male managers may feel like they are insulating themselves in the age of #MeToo, cutting off women’s access to mentoring and access to senior-level managers is just another form of discrimination and sexism. Companies need to address this to help women feel confident and comfortable at work. fastcompany.com

Drone Delivery - Solving Early Drop-Off Challenges Safely
In order to successfully launch and safely operate such programs, firms will need to tackle various operational issues.

One such issue is how to safely drop parcels from the sky to the ground undamaged. A number of companies in the logistics space — both major players and niche startups — are formulating solutions:

Amazon has been awarded a patent for a system that enables drones to recognize and avoid objects in a yard that might get in the way of a falling package. The firm has also been awarded a patent for a technology that enables drones to recognize human movements, which could be used to drop parcels directly to humans, for example.

Valqari, a startup founded in 2017, has created purpose-built mailboxes for drones to drop parcels on top of. The firm's mailbox (pictured below) utilizes smart technology to communicate with a drone and guide it to the landing pad.

Other firms working on drone deliveries — such as UPS and FedEx — could also develop ancillary drone tech, though they haven't revealed such plans as yet.

If each drone delivery company creates a proprietary system or technology for package drop-offs, it could limit which services consumers use, as installing multiple systems could be unwieldy.

To remedy this, public entities like the United States Postal Service (USPS) may need to create standardized mailboxes or landing pads for drone delivery parcels. The USPS owns and regulates all mailboxes in the US, allowing itself and all third-party delivery firms to deliver mail and parcels to a standardized receptacle. But losing $2B last quarter alone means they have other priorities.

Alternatively, an intra-industry consortium or standards group could work to create a universal drone delivery mailbox, but even that could be time-consuming. Ultimately, a universal standard for drone delivery tech is a far way off. businessinsider.com

Carriers Finally Stop Selling Location Data
Letters to FCC Show
Reports emerged a year ago that all the major cellular carriers in the U.S. were selling location data to third-party companies, which in turn sold them to pretty much anyone willing to pay. New letters published by the FCC show that despite a year of scrutiny and anger, the carriers have only recently put an end to this practice.

Carriers took their time shutting down the arrangements they had in place, and communication on the process has been infrequent and inadequate. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel has been particularly frustrated by the foot-dragging and lack of communication on this issue (by companies and the commission).

“The FCC has been totally silent about press reports that for a few hundred dollars shady middlemen can sell your location within a few hundred meters based on your wireless phone data. That’s unacceptable,” she wrote in a statement posted today.

To provide a bit of closure, she decided to publish letters (PDF) from the major carriers explaining their current positions.

Location data is obviously valuable to consumers and many services can and should be able to request it — from those consumers. No one is arguing otherwise. But this important data was clearly being irresponsibly handled by the carriers, and it is probably right that the location aggregation business gets a hard stop and not a band-aid. We’ll likely see new businesses and arrangements appearing soon — but you can be sure that these too will require close monitoring to make sure the carriers don’t allow them to get out of hand… again. techcrunch.com

Predicting 95% of Your Turnover Within 6 Months
How to Identify Your Company's Flight Risks
Human resources can reduce employee attrition and improve engagement when equipped with predictive data analytics that point out where turnover risk is highest.

Flight risk models help identify what types of employee profiles are the most likely to leave the company, enabling HR to make strategic decisions about whom to target for retention and where to invest in development opportunities.

"A flight risk model determines the people characteristics, demographics and attitudes that are most strongly related to whether or not employees voluntarily exit the organization," said Scott Mondore, a data analytics expert and co-founder and managing partner of Strategic Management Decisions, based in Atlanta. "It provides a profile across every job function or seniority level of attributes that exhibit impact on turnover. For example, it compares all the people who have left the organization in the past 12 months against all the people who have stayed over that same time and surfaces the reasons why the people who left did so and why the people who stayed, stayed."

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty recently made a splash when she said that the technology pioneer can now predict with 95 percent accuracy which employees are likely to leave their jobs within six months. shrm.org

Former CFO, The Body Store, Bryan Vonderahe, 45, Kirkwood, MO Charged Embezzling $3.8M
The indictment charging Bryan Vonderahe alleges that beginning during January, 2012 and continuing through January, 2019, Vonderahe schemed to defraud a local company where he was employed as chief financial officer and controller. Vonderahe is alleged to have issued approximately 500 company checks to himself during that period of time, totaling approximately 3.8 million dollars, without the knowledge or authority of the company’s ownership. If convicted, as to each charge Vonderahe faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Restitution is also mandatory. justice.gov leadferret.com

The Monitoring Association (TMA) announces twelve finalists for 2019 TMA Excellence Awards
In alphabetical order by company within each category, they are:
 

“Each year, we take tremendous pride in recognizing Monitoring Centers who demonstrate their commitment to excellence, as well as those working in key support roles within the monitoring industry whose dedication, skills, and abilities set them apart from their peers,” said Leigh A. McGuire, director of Marketing and Communications, TMA. “Our finalists this year represent the best–in-class within the monitoring industry today and we extend our sincere congratulations to each company and professional.” tma.us

Coresight: 12K stores could shutter in 2019
6,378 store closures so far this year, over 500 more than all of 2018's closures. Coresight estimates that as many as 12,000 stores could close by the end of the year.

The news isn't all bad, though. Retailers have also announced 2,726 store openings this year.

The lists of closing stores this year tell a range of stories, from decades-old retailers that suddenly found themselves irrelevant and financially unviable. And then there are the retailers somewhere in between on that spectrum, not in bankruptcy but quickly moving to jettison stores as they face sales declines.

While discounters and off-price retailers continue peppering the world with their stores, other retailers — many of them over-stored to begin with — are still shrinking as they look for the right balance between physical and digital retail, and shutter unprofitable stores. retaildive.com

Sears' Seven Decades of Self-Destruction
Sears’ bankruptcy filing last year sparked torrents of criticism for its current leaders. But the problems that brought down this former Fortune 500 stalwart date way back to the Eisenhower era. Here’s what leaders can learn from an icon’s slow-motion collapse  fortune.com


TX Pass Bill Allowing Farmers to Grow Hemp

Children's Place to Close 45 & Open 25

Lidl to open 25 East Coast Stores - The slow growing grocery threat

Publix to Expand HQ by $65M


Quarterly Results
Boot Barn Q4 comp's up 8.7%, net sales up 12.9%, full yr comp's up 10%, net sales up 14.6%



Last week's #1 article --

10 Things Retail Workers Notice ID'ing Shoplifters The Second They Walk In