A CCTV Company Is Paying Remote Workers in India to Yell at Armed Robbers | Hacker News Reader

A CCTV Company Is Paying Remote Workers in India to Yell at Armed Robbers

vice.com

129 pointskrustyburger55 comments

When I worked at a water utility we would occasionally have people breaking into our remote sites like water towers either to vandalise them or climb the assets for the view.

When you just want people off your site ASAP we found providing the operators with remote loudspeakers and allowing them to say "Hey we can see you, we've called the police" was a very effective way to convince anyone that was trespassing to leave.

Though we did lose a few cameras when kids decided to throw rocks at the CCTV system before they left...

> to vandalise them or climb the assets for the view.

Or to use them as swimming pools during heat waves

Absolutely, and that sounds like a great plan there. But in the example given in the article, that 100% sounds like a recipe to get the clerk killed. The robber forces the clerk behind the counter, and then a voice says "police have been called" - surely they are going to assume the clerk did something, right? Lucky that in this case they ran away, but what if they didn't?

Like the article said - there is a reason why a silent alarm at banks is silent - it makes it safer for the employees.

do you understand what remote means?

Yes, what's your point?

I think the vast majority of this thread agree with you that what we saw in the article was incredibly dangerous to the employee.

In my example these sites are unmanned 99% of the time but if there was an operator on site and someone back in the head office went on the loud speaker to tell off some trespassers I can't imagine OH&S or the on-site operator would be the slightest bit impressed.

Yeah of course, that's why I said it's a very good plan :-) in your example it makes perfect sense.

In the video, the voice starts shouting at the robbers that they've dialled 911. But when they leave it tells the cashier to do it - then also tells him to follow the armed robbers outside to get the license plate number. Is that good advice..?

Hell no. Not even going to elaborate on why. It is too obvious.

It’s OK, it was a rhetorical question - clearly NO! And the reasons is not particularly complicated: you get shot.

No, sounds terrible, especially if they can't even call 911 remotely.

From the article: "You don’t startle someone with an assault rifle. ... There’s a reason why the silent alarm is silent at banks and other businesses."

You'd think for all that they'd be able to afford an outside camera capable of recording license plates.

I was thinking this would be like home security cameras and how fun it would be to yell at home thieves all day. What a depressing reality it's just berating your own convenience store staff for taking a soda.

You already can with devices like Ring. I have a Ring doorbell and I can yell remotely at anyone in front of my door using the Ring App. It has motion sensors so I get notified if someone is in front of the door even before they ring the doorbell and I can talk to them.

Yeah, but the boring reality is noone is ever trying to break into my house. If I got to yell at everyone across the country, though...

Even though the service only costs about $0.50 USD/hour the price still doesn't seem justified by any potential cost savings. Unless the store is averaging two or more stolen sodas per hour and the service is reliable enough to catch/prevent those two stolen sodas every hour I don't really see the value proposition to the store owners other than employee surveillance.

let’s say your shop is open 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. 1670.5 = $56. let’s say you’re getting robbed once a week, which may be realistic in certain places, and each time they take $150 worth of cash and products. if the service can prevent one of those, it’s worth it.

a more realistic calculation is whether you’re making enough profit per hour to afford the 50c extra

This general concept has existed for a while, and the monitoring is often done in the US. The basic premise is to use video analytics to spot anomalies, most commonly along the lines of people jumping a fence to a secured property, and then sending an alert to the central station for an operator to review and act on.

In recent years, video analytics have (sort of) evolved to the point that some degree of gesture and action recognition can be implemented to spot acts of crime or aggression.

While the person-jumping-fence scenario can be repeatedly detected with a high degree of confidence, and false alarm scenarios like a cat or raccoon climbing the fence ignored, action/gesture recognition is far less accurate overall. I think this is why they are outsourcing monitoring to India instead of using one of the many domestic video monitoring operations (eg: Rapid Response, COPS, etc.). I would wager that maybe 1 in 50 of the events the remote operator gets alerted to is actually something of interest.

The remote audio talk down is very effective though, although these systems are more commonly used for outdoor theft and vandalism protection. The scenarios here of an indoor robbery are somewhat extreme. Typically if a store is at THAT much risk for robbery they end up installing bullet-proof plexi or taking other steps that are more effective in reducing risk than a remote operator and a speaker.

Source: this general market and application has been my focus for the last decade+

This reminds me about how the person behind the telescreen tells Winston he needs to bend lower while stretching. (1984 film/book)

Modern slaves on both sides of the camera.

Yeah if this is the future then maybe the occasional robbery isn't so bad.

when freedom is outlawed only outlaws will be free or something.

ok actually the story writes itself here:

Adhu works yelling at robbers all day remotely in India. It is a good enough job, but he does dream of some day emigrating to the U.S, the company he works for has bought into a convenience store chain and he achieves his dream, going to the U.S and working in the convenience store there.

Every now and then a robbery happens, then the people on the cameras come on and yell at the robbers. Some of these people are his old co-workers, he has interesting conversations with them. Some of his friends have also come to the U.S to work but they haven't been heard from for a while.

One day a robber comes into the convenience store, it is Adhu's old friend from work Samil, Adhu tries to talk to him but the voices come on over cameras and yell at Samil. Samil runs out - now a new thing happens, the voices inform Adhu as part of the new company tough on crime initiative he needs to take a revolver hidden beneath the cash register and follow Samil out and shoot him. Adhu is horrified, he refuses. The next day when he shows up for work the voices come over the camera and fire him and yell at him to leave the store.

In America without a job Adhu naturally has a tough time, and is ready to give up hope when the company contacts him with a new offer - he can work as a robber robbing the company convenience stores (and other convenience stores of course) he will get a share of whatever money he steals plus a very nice hourly salary - it is definitely an improvement in his position. It seems the company was so successful with their anti-robbery services they were in danger of going out of business because there were no more robbers left.

Things are going good monetarily but Adhu doesn't like getting yelled when he is robbing the stores, it depresses him. He starts drinking, the voices call him a drunk, drunk Adhu when it is his old friends calling him. One day he robs the store manned by one of his old friends who has emigrated, as he is escaping the former friend follows him outside and shoots him.

Thanks, but maybe you should stick to Reddit.

> the company he works for has bought into a convenience store chain and he achieves his dream, going to the U.S and working in the convenience store there

Cute, but US immigration law means this person has no chance of immigration through this kind of work and they’re also ineligible for the green card lottery.

yeah it's obviously some sort of near future story in which corporate money has been used to pollute the sanctity of U.S law, enabling a scenario such as this, as unlikely as that may sound.

If this is forbidden, then how are so many corner stores employing immigrants?

this is good, esp the ending.

It's true. A documentary film should be made of it, as it encapsulates so much about so many topics.

As Robin Williams once said of the British Bobby’s: “stop, or I’ll say stop again!”

This is the ultimate human-in-the-loop based AI you can ever have. This reminds me of a situation when I was india in 2019. I was in a megastore called Big bazaar, I wanted to search, find stuff. There were at least 8 employees people per aisle, and they helped me find stuff, recommended things like mangoes, compared prices for me and found the best deal in the store.

No amount of AI in the world can recreate that shopping experience.

I wouldn't be surprised if there is NoAI/LowAI movement that promotes these kind of experiences over machine centric approach.

> This is the ultimate human-in-the-loop based AI you can ever have.

Where do you see AI in the article?

This is interpretation of an AI system, something like mechanical turk where you get a feeling that an objective is achieved by the system but in reality there human doing thr task.

I've heard stories from people working in retail/restaurants where the owners would watch the cameras from home and call in on the landline to bitch out employees when they do something wrong. Their churn rate was abysmal.

My son got asked to do some yard work for a friend's boss. My son's friend bailed so I decided to help. After 5 hours of hard manual labor work for less than minimum wage we were finished.

When the boss lady showed up she tried to neg us on the work that was already done. She threatened to show us how lazy we were working on the cameras and that is why she was only going to pay us 2/3 of what we agreed on. We never took any breaks so it was pure insanity.

Thankfully the experience has him working way harder in school! No wonder there is a labor shortage; the beatings will continue untill moral improves!

Ah yes, we already have generally intelligent AI. It's apparently accessed through amazon mechanical turk.

Reminds me of a short story where managers are the first to be replaced by AI.

Don't remember the name, though.

probably Manna: Two Views of Humanity’s Future

https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

Is it "Manna"? https://marshallbrain.com/manna There was a huge[1] discussion about it in HN a long time ago, but I can't find it https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

[1] Back in my days, huge meant like 20 points and 5 comments :)

Ironically manager is the ideal job to be replaced with AL. A manager is a proxy for senior leadership wishes. This is easier to replace then the workers below who have physical and varied jobs.

They really are one of the most ripe for replacement, given their role and duties.

The headline is a bit misleading - the main body of the article is how the remote workers are more acting as virtual over-the-shoulder supervisors of the 7-11 workers, e.g., pestering them if they paid for that drink they took, etc.

Yelling at robbers (and capturing data) is a great idea. Constant monitoring is a burgeoning hellscape.

Yelling at robbers is a terrible idea, silent alarms are silent for a reason.

Regular alarms are loud for a reason.

Regular alarms are typically triggered at the point of entry / forced entry, to discourage the intruders from entering the building.

Silent alarms are triggered during a hostage situation. e.g. when a cashier / bank teller / etc. is in danger because they are being threatened with a weapon. At this stage, it is not advisable to startle the robber because it may cause them to harm the hostage.

It depends on what your goal is.

Do you want the robbers to flee, taking nothing with them and causing minimum damage?

Or do you want the police to show up and incarcerate, possibly injure or kill them, and cause more property damage and possibly loss if the robbers get away before (if) the police arrive?

Or, the armed robbers panic, start shooting up the cameras and speakers, and maybe the cashier too, if they're particularly angry.

Assuming an armed individual will act predictably or rationally in response to being yelled at seems specious.

Yes, there is always a tension between the home/store owners and the police.

The home/store owners typically want a loud alarm to warn the intruder, deter them from further action, and convince them to flee.

The police want a silent alarm to give them time to get on the scene and apprehend the intruders and thieves so they can get an arrest and conviction.

It is a bit of a Commons Problem that benefits the criminals, where it is in the individual's interest to use a loud alarm that will warn them in time to flee, but it is in the common interest to use a silent alarm to allow police to catch the criminals sooner.

Clearly, these store owners are on the individual side of the fence.

What if they think the cashier triggered the warning?

> Constant monitoring is a burgeoning hellscape.

Based on my conversations with parents, they seem to like livestream video cameras at their kids’ daycare. So then I ask them if they would be okay with video cameras at their workplace (most are office/computer workers), and they claim they would be okay with that too.

I’ve worked at places with security cameras. There’s nothing I’m doing in an open office that I wouldn’t want on camera.

I worked in a couple of factories out of high school and they had cameras everywhere but the bathrooms. Most retail places also have cameras everywhere. Us white collar workers don’t realize just how spoiled we are with this stuff (then again there is less need for cameras on white collar workers, since most of the stuff you can steal is on the other side of a screen anyway.)

It's funny (or maybe dystopian) that businesses don't really care about getting stolen from anymore, as long as they can identify what was stolen/how so that they can have their insurance pay for it.

If they're _too_ lax, wouldn't their premiums eventually go up?

And employers continue to wonder why workers aren't coming back...

No employer is wondering anything. It's plainly evident when you spend a year pat ng people more to stay at home than work that this would be a consequence.

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