Walmart secured a patent to eavesdrop on shoppers and employees
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Walmart was granted a patent this week for a new listening system for its retail stores that, if ever deployed, may make some employees and shoppers uncomfortable. According to the filing and claims, it’s “an example system for capturing and analyzing sounds in a shopping facility.” In other words, it’s a kind of surveillance system.
For example, this proposed listening system would be able to detect the rustling of shopping bags and the beeps at a register. Walmart could use this tech as an anti-theft solution to find out if number of items in a transaction and number of bags used checks out. It sounds like a reasonable application of technology in a major retail store, right?