Engineering360: "Startup creates AI software that detects shoplifters before they steal"

As I understand it, the normal rules of retail staff engagement dictate that employees will approach to offer you help whenever you do not need it, and conversely will never offer help when you actually could do with some. So as long as they don't start arresting people who aren't actually shoplifting, this could be quite useful to shoppers, if we can just figure out how to 'look nervous' instead of lost, baffled, or searching for shop staff.

Yeah, that about sums it up.

Let's hope this insanity stays in the land of the rising sun.

As taken from the paragraph, " retailers are alerted so they can intervene, approaching the suspect " .

This could be viewed as a violation of the 4th amendment, among others.

According to the dictionary a suspect is :

(a) ( noun ) A person thought to be guilty of a crime or offense. ,

(b) ( transitive verb ) To imagine one to be guilty or culpable on slight evidence or without proof.

In Law Enforcement jargon : A suspect is a known person accused or suspected of committing a crime.

(a) Wikipedia. (b) Merriam Webster.

Apparently in Japan, your guilty first, innocent second.

Maybe the article should have referred to the 'suspect', a subject of investigation to be a 'person of interest'.