re: Walmart facial recognition camera software going further than you assume?

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It's probably coming. We have them in Dallas area.

We were also one of the first for Sam's Club to have the blue "Scan and Go" arch. Eventually, this stuff gets rolled out to the other locations.

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Probably not, I don't live in a trashy area.

Or, according to Google Lens, it could be one of these...

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The gray object is a component of a shopping cart wheel lock system, designed to prevent the cart from leaving a designated area.
The system uses a mechanism, often involving a radio transmitter at the store, that locks the wheels if the cart goes beyond a certain perimeter.
This specific component is likely a sensor or part of the locking mechanism attached near the wheel.
It is often found on metal wire-style shopping carts used in retail and grocery stores.
The goal of such systems is to prevent cart theft and reduce the costs associated with replacing lost carts.

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Walmart and casinos may have the most advanced facial rec in the world.

Walmart is hardcore about prosecuting people who trespass after being banned for stealing.

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I heard a rumor that the facial recognition at the self check out keeps tabs on people that skip scanning items or scan a cheaper barcode in order to reduce the price of an item. Once you hit the felony monetary level of theft that information and video is turned over to the police. And they already have your plate number from tracking you to the parking lot.

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I had a self checkout go haywire on me last week and the lady working them had to help me twice.

It all had to do with a price reduction that would not ring up correctly. Either way, she came back and had to redo the entire purchase for me. What was weird was one item I scanned right in front of her did not show up yet everything else did. I thought I was about to get read the riot act or reported to security but she just rang everything up, updated the prices, and sent me on my way. Also helped (I guess) that the item that didn't ring up was like $2.

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You are 100% wrong if you think this is only for engaging a wheel lock system.

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Think what you want, I can't change your mind.

I'm just telling you I've worked with GPS since the 1990's when they were the size of a backpack.

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I stopped into Walmart to pick something up for my wife and only the self checkout was open, I was cooking gumbo that day so I figured I'd just get the produce stuff there. While doing the self checkout the machine stopped and wanted an attendant to come over, he comes over, ask what he can help with, I tell him no clue, the machine did it, turns out the overhead camera thought I'd put 5 bell peppers in my bag, even though I only had 4, and put 4 into the quantity.

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My local grocery store self-checkout always has issues scanning yellow squash for some reason. Like it comes back with an error, and their workers can't bypass it. A worker one time told me to just put it as green zucchini and weigh it that way as it's the same price. So I do that maybe 4-5 times over the course of several months until one time a worker was watching me type in green zucchini and had an absolute conniption.

I say "Hey I was told to do this by one of your coworkers because the yellow squash button doesn't work."

She says, "Well whoever told you that was wrong and you should not do that."

I say, "Well what the hell do you want me to do?"

She tries to run it as yellow squash. Same error comes back. She goes and gets the manager to see what the issue is. The manager eventually says, "Hey just run it as green zucchini, it's the same price."

I don't go through self-checkout anymore if I'm buying yellow squash.

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Walmart is hardcore about prosecuting people who trespass after being banned for stealing.

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I’ve heard that Wal Mart will prosecute theft 100% of the time to the fullest extent possible.

Steal a pack of gum and they’ll be there in courts to testify against you if need be.

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A general area perhaps but I struggle to imagine that at such a short range you have poor resolution. Not asile by asile.

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If you are talking about what I was doing, correct. I just used a USB wireless antenna set to promiscous mode, and sat at the security desk with my laptop using airsniff-ng looking for beacons as people walked in.

If you're talking about tracking wireless devices, like I mentioned in my previous post it's very simple to do using three WAPs triangulating via signal strength. Used it quite a bit at a previous job to find rogue wireless devices on our company network.

I don't care at all what they track

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You don't need GPS to triangulate position, just WAPs and a wireless transmitter on the cart.

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Exactly. There are much easier ways to do this, with much better accuracy. For example there are low power bluetooth beacons that can do this, but the accuracy still wouldn't be good enough to track if you were looking at specific items.

The question is why would you want to track to this precision? Every inch of walmart is covered with security cameras. Wouldn't it be much easier to track customer behavior using them? I have multiple security cameras around my house that can track people animals or vehicles with great accuracy. If you want to gather the type of information the OP is talking about CAMERAS are the way to do it, not tracking beacons in carts.

Which gets up back to why put a device like this on a cart? The answer is what I originally said. To keep the carts from walking away.