LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 110 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: July 7, 2022

An Active Shooter During July 4th Parade Examined! Stay Connected with the LPRC with the Connect Newsletter! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss an LPRC Body Worn Camera Project, a Discussion on Consumer E-Commerce Shopping Habits, a discussion of TikTok User Privacy, Retail Habits in 2021 vs 2022, and the separation of work vs personal technology for security. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 110 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Take advantage of the advanced video capabilities offered by Bosch to help reduce your shrink risk. Integrate video recordings with point-of-s sale data for visual verification of transactions and exception reporting. Use video analytics for immediate notification of important AP related events and leverage analytics metadata for fast forensic searches for evidence and to

improve merchandising and operations. Learn more about extending your video system beyond simple surveillance in zones one through four of LPRC's zones of influence by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com. All right, welcome everybody to another episode of Crime Science, the podcast. This is the latest in our weekly update series with colleagues Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Ian. This is Reid Hayes, and we're joined, as always, by our producer, Diego Rodriguez. And today we're going to kind of do a quick trip around the world, talk about things that might being discovered as infected people have some of their infections studied and examined. Increasingly, the virus does look transmissible, which is, of course, to be expected and not particularly virulent or dangerous compared to past variants,

especially Delta. But nevertheless, we're still running in the United States just over 100,000 reported infections daily, compared to about 10% of that last year at this time, is my understanding from looking at the literature. And looking at some of the therapies, many, many are in trial still. And we're seeing with one particular treatment, evidently, they're seeing there's some rebound effect. In fact, Dr. Tony Fauci himself not only got infected with COVID-19 disease from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but also took, evidently was administered the therapy, and two weeks later, roughly, I think you experience a rebound effect where you might experience symptoms again. So, you know, these are still early days, believe it or not, even though we're into over two years of dealing with this virus to our understanding and knowledge. But just notes of interest there. Looking, too, at the vaccination front, I thought it would be interesting to look at

what's going on in the United States, where we've got closing in on 300 million Americans that have experienced at least one dose at this point of a vaccine. And again, we've talked about there are many, many more vaccines being tested as we speak. Right now, we've got in the phase one trials, there are still now back up to 54 phase one trial coronavirus vaccine candidates, 46 in phase two, and now 50, up to 50 in phase three testing. And bear in mind, again, there are 12 fully approved vaccines globally and 21 that have some sort of emergency use authorization due to a global pandemic. So that front continues. And we're looking at also, by the way, globally, the number of vaccinated people now is just about 5 billion that are listed as fully vaccinated, depending on the course of the vaccine.

One, two, three, four or five injections, depending on what it is or doses. And then we're looking at about 5.3 billion that have administered been administered at least one dose. So we see people continue to get vaccinated for the vaccine. So in addition to natural immunity, we're seeing that. Now, again, there are growing numbers. Still, it looks like a minority, certainly, but there are those experienced breakthrough infections have been naturally infected, sometimes even more than once naturally infected by coronavirus that again get it again. And the same thing with vaccinated individuals as well, including those that have had one, two or two boosters. So we can see this is a sneaky, very capable, unfortunately, virus, but it's there. Research continues on are there better and better vaccines that will reduce infection likelihood.

And again, many people in some countries in some areas are still masking up maybe at the 30 to 50 percent level, it looks like from what I can see. Moving on, we're again excited about the impact conference, the LPRC 2022 version. And so again, for all the best news, I would send a note if anybody's interested, again, to operations at lpresearch.org. And we will put you on the Connect e-newsletter. We're always putting out great information. Diego Rodriguez is the editor of the Connect. And it's really a very visually attractive and easily used format. Again, a lot of big pictures, small words, great links to new research that's coming out of our team almost weekly now.

The research and actions that's either new or current research, recent research, and then some that we've gone of our team almost weekly now, the research and actions that's either new or current research, recent research, and then some that we've gone to our archives that has either been updated and re-released or doesn't need to. It appears to be very timeless type of information. So, you're seeing about 50 reports emerged from our team in the form of RIAs, research and actions, but also on the website, lpresearch.org, or via the ConnectD newsletter. That's where we've got our summits listed. Violent crime working group, obviously the supply chain protection coming up as well in Philadelphia, and then impact the first week in October. and then impact the first week in October. I would strongly encourage everybody that's thinking about coming to and participating in the LPRC impact in Gainesville, get registered now.

There's not, there may not be a lot of seats left based on the registration levels that we're seeing. Going over now, talking a little bit about some of the research I've mentioned before, are now talking a little bit about some of the research I've mentioned before, the active shooter killer assailant research, while we've conducted other research in the past, including in 2019 and 2020, and part of 2021, the 2022 version we got with now, it looks like 11 retailers, what we had on the call, and going through what they're doing to earlier and earlier detect potential threats. We see with some of the latest horrors going on. We had one just over the weekend here, the 4th July weekend, an individual who was shooting into a gathering in Illinois near the Chicago area. area. At the time that I'm recording this here on Tuesday, July 5th, 2022, we're talking about at least six that have died from wounds inflicted by this individual, as well as at least 30 that

were wounded. But a lot of social media posting by this character, YouTube videos, claims to be a wrapper of some description. And there are all types of drawings. We've got videos, there are social media postings, there are utterances around others. So how do we better sense and pick up on some of these threats or ideation language, some of the messaging, some of the coordination or enablement, some of the acquisition of tools they might need to carry out harming others. So that's really what we're trying to do in this particular project. The body-worn camera, the planning's done. We're going to be working with four types or four manufacturers, body-worn cameras that we're excited about. We've got AXIS, their version, and they've got a white and a black version, including a sensor that you can move up more on your shoulder. We're looking at Axon's current offering in a body-worn camera. We're also looking at Motorola's current offering in a body-worn camera. And then finally, with a Reveal Media version. Reveal Media is out of the UK and has extensive deployment, including not just law enforcement and retailing itself in the UK. We're coordinating with LPRC retailer members that are in Australia and New Zealand as well. and New Zealand as well. So a ton of research going on. We're interviewing for new research scientists. We've got other things going on in the research area we'll talk about later.

So if I might, let me turn it over to Tony D'Onofrio, friend and colleague. Tony, if you could take it away. Thank you very much, Reed. And again, excellent update on both COVID and what's going on in this crazy world of ours. Let me start this week. And actually, I'm going on in this crazy world of ours. Let me start this week and actually I'm going to focus this entire week on an update on an article that I just published following NRF Protect which summarizes the latest on global retail sales, e-commerce, physical store trends, consumer challenges and some of the headwinds that are ahead from retailers. And again, you can find this article on multiple of my platforms, including LinkedIn, starting

today. I opened this article because it was in Cleveland, the home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and actually, it includes the world rocking in the retail world, which is actually from an actual rock song is the actual title. So and the picture and it actually started because I took a picture in front of a guitar that actually said retail rocks. And so let me tell you a little bit in terms of wide retail rocks. Let's go back to 2021, which confirmed that all consumers are resilient and continue to shop brands. In May that year, eMarketer forecasted that retail sales globally would rise 6% to just over $25 trillion, which was a significant comeback from 2020. But by the end of the year, actually, that forecast was too low. Twenty one twenty twenty one global retail sales grew nine point seven percent, reaching total spending at just over twenty six trillion.

So think about that. We've added a trillion dollars more than what was projected. And that's a lot of money. Twenty twenty one in-store sales grew a healthy eight point two% globally to just $21 trillion, which was more than was spent in 2019, and that was led by pent-up demand from in-person shoppers accelerated by two full years. When the e-marketer research was published in January, brick and mortar sales were projected to grow 2.6% to 3.4% for the remainder of the forecast out to 2025. More spending is expected in physical retail than e-commerce in 2022, despite this slower growth rate. The article also talks a little bit about what's happening to online sales. 2022 will mark a major milestone worldwide with e-commerce sales crossing over $5 trillion

for the first time. The spike in 2020, there was a major spike because we all said at home ordering of 26%, but that spike is abating. The sector will still enjoy double-digit growth to 2024. By 2025, e-commerce will represent nearly 24% of total global retail sales. Some interesting stats that I found in terms of what's happening to e-commerce, there are now 7.1 million online retailers operating globally, and 25% of these are in the United States.

87% of consumers now start their shopping experience online with product searches. Of that percentage, and this one shocked me, a massive 74% of consumers begin their product searches on Amazon. percent of consumers begin their product searches on Amazon. Gen Z has the greatest online shopping preference of any generation, with nearly 88 percent of these young generations preferring to start there. And that compares to baby boomers, which I'm one of them, but only 41 percent of us prefer to shop online. Seventy-three percent of businesses are currently selling via social media, with that number expected to rise to 79% in the next three years. And 73% of shoppers are more likely to decide to buy an item if the shipping is free. So it gives you an idea. And that shipping cost is very high. The latest data also confirms that you really need to have both a strong e-commerce

presence and also a physical store presence, and really you need to have both. And when it comes to year-on-year growth in Omnichannel, 58% in the UK, and 56% in Canada reported higher sales growth with a whopping 21% of Omni channel merchants in the US reporting significant higher revenue, far more than the overall average. So you need to be Omni channel. All the research that I did also confirmed that physical stores are back and rocking again on multiple levels. As humans, we enjoy the interaction with products. 62% of consumers want to see, touch, feel, and try out items, and hence choose to buy from a physical store. 61% of customers want to try products in person before making a purchase,

and 76% of people prefer to go to a physical store for holiday shopping. We're also increasingly leveraging technology to enhance our shopping experience for in-store purchases, and this is getting higher and higher. 82% of smartphone users consult their phone before shopping whilst doing it in-store. Also, we added a whole bunch of new services that have accelerated in our hero state during the pandemic. 68% of U.S. consumers now use buy online, pick up and store or Bopas. from the pandemic start to 2021 the share of retailer offering curbside pickup has risen 44 and this reminds me reid of all the work that you're doing in the parking lot and how important that is

now having said that those new services are expensive that can detract from profitability and margins. So technology is the answer there, again, in terms of optimizing those journeys. And then there's good news all around. I mean, each month, customers spend 69% of their discretionary income in-store. However, to stay relevant, physical stores will need to continue to evolve and keep up with impatient consumers. Globally, in the United States and actually in multiple other countries,

60% of consumers are not patient. So you need to have good structure and service in stores because consumers will quickly move on. And my gut tells me that was accelerated by the pandemic. The top three issues that retailers are challenged right now are keeping and hiring good people, rising supply chain costs and inventory and supply chain challenges. Also, inflation, as we all know, is all around us and it doesn't look like it's going to subside anytime soon. U.S. inflation has almost quadrupled over the last two years, but for many parts of the world, it has risen even higher. In fact, the highest inflation is actually in Israel.

That had the fastest and rising inflation. And, of course, the Ukraine war is also adding additional global uncertainty to the stability of global markets. Now, even with all those headwinds, retail is vibrant, resilient, and in the spirit of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, will continue to rock in the future. But in the near term, clouds of uncertainty will increase. U.S. consumers, as I said last week, have already started cutting back. The biggest reductions are in driving, 52 percent, large purchases, 47 percent, travel, 46 percent, entertainment, 50 percent, and clothing or other goods, 42 percent. And let me summarize, because it's important here at the LPRC,

technology will remain a key differentiator where retail goes next. Our recession is probably, in my view, our recession is probably ahead in 2023, but it's worth remembering ourselves that a digitally empowered consumer experience, really with more immersive experiences inside stores with strong brands, is what will deliver a much brighter future of retail. So headwinds ahead, but retail will continue to be bright and will continue to rock. And with that, let me turn it over to Tom. Oh, thank you, Reid. And thank you, Tony, as always. over to the top. Oh, thank you, Reid. And thank you, Tony, as always. Well, it's been a pretty busy, busy few weeks here. And I'm just going to go through some risk related things and cover just a couple of new things that are coming up. One is Apple made an announcement that they will be

having something called a lockdown mode, which is actually specifically designed to stop government actors or government-based spyware. So you probably heard me talk about, you know, cyber incidents and the risk of nation-state actors. And when you have these nation-state actors or government backed, it's very hard to even the very best laid plan. So now Apple has announced this new security feature called Lockdown Mode. They'll roll it out with iOS 16, which is coming up in the next major update of their software. And what it basically is designed for is to protect human rights defenders, journalists, and people that are high risk. It is not designed for everyday users like the folks like you and I. high risk. It is not designed for everyday users like the folks like you and I, but what it allows you to do is once the lockdown mode is enabled, it'll allow Apple, iPhones, warning iOS 6 to have

different features disconnected. So basically messaging, web browsing, and connectivity protection designed to block mercenary spyware like NSO groups or Pasigwe, like these very high-end spyware that generally is only government-initiated. Once this is put on, it does limit some of the devices, but nothing is hacker-proof, but it really, really, really takes away the opportunity for even a very sophisticated attack. Now, lockdown mode will basically change a lot of operating systems. So there are certain things that it can't protect against, but it can protect against a lot of things that are out there. So it's very interesting because a lot of the tech articles are putting about this is another step toward privacy. This would eliminate both good

actors and bad actors in government. And what I mean by that is someone that has a subpoena or a legal right to track this and actually see what someone is doing, this is actually something that would limit that. So I think as privacy becomes more of a concern, this reminds me of the early days of the BlackBerry, where you're talking about taking very extreme measures to limit some of the use cases, but really protect the end user. I suspect that you'll see a lot more government-issued iPhones once this comes out. see a lot more government-issued iPhones once this comes out. It is definitely something that we're going to see in the future, and I think there will be a lot more there. In other news, just related to cyber instances and breaches, Marriott, who's had several breaches

over the past few years, I think there were three, has actually come out and talked to the fact that they were a part of a failed extortion attempt. So there was a data leak that occurred. And they, much like what we keep talking about in cyber instances, mold into ransomware, to breaches, to all these other things. That's why I like to use the word cyber instance, because usually there's more than one affected part. We've talked about many times here on the podcast that we're starting to see this extortion or blackmailing attempts. And so this attack or, you know, attempted to extort Marriott under the threat of leaking stolen files online. The Heltel group did not make any payment or provide anything to the threat actor. And it, you know, is, you know,

one of the things I would say is that this is one of those things that we're going to continue to see as people and companies have breaches or have cyber instances, hackers, and these are hackers generally for financial gain. They're not, you know, someone just trying to see the, I guess, what I would say growing up hackers of just trying to see if they can get in. They're not, you know, someone just trying to see the, I guess what I would say, growing up hackers of just trying to see if they can get in. They're going after financial targets and trying to monetize them in multiple fashions. I think we're going to see more of that because obviously the bad guys follow the money. So I think you're going to see more of these extortion threats of leaking. And as I reported earlier on the podcast, we're starting to see individual

extortion where people are going to the actual end user that was a part of the breach and trying to extort them. So I think this is the future of cyber instances where you have a ransomware that turns into a breach, that turns into extortion, and then they take that information and use it for phishing later. So I think there's this evolution occurring, which is probably what we expected, but will continue to be up and kind of challenging. On another front, there was an anonymous threat actor. So there's someone out there who's selling several databases that claim to contain 22 terabytes.

So if you think of that, for those of you that are familiar with video, 22 terabytes is So if you think of that, for those of you that are familiar with video, 22 terabytes is a lot of data, a billion Chinese citizens worth of data. This is out on the dark web today, and they're trying to sell it for $195,000. So as significant, when you think of a billion, 1 billion people's worth of information, US has 334 million. So this is a tremendous amount of information that's available. And there is sample data that this person has given out to show that is real. They've actually gone and put 750,000 records out there containing delivery information, ID information, police call records.

So this is a fairly significant breach. The Shanghai National Police database was leaked to this date in 2022. This is unrelated. This database contains many terabytes of data information and billions of Chinese citizen information. There's part of that information in here. So as these hacks or events occur, they get prolific and very large. You may be asking yourself, what does that have to do with us here in the United States? It's just an indicator that as the cyber threat landscape changes, it becomes a much richer environment to monetize. It also, as cyber

bad actors, the red cyber person gets success with one attack, they generally multiply or duplicate that attack over other areas. So it's certainly something to watch out for and certainly something to be aware of. One of the things, switching gears a little bit, just in news, tech news around cell phones, I thought this was interesting. I do think this will affect retailers, is there is a story in TechCrunch that's been hitting the news all over the tech scene about a billion-dollar startup out of India that uses a lock screen on your cell phone to advertise. Why do I think that's interesting? Because it talks about the evolution of advertising.

And I think we're going to see that. Not a heck of a lot of data here. This is very, very common in India today and in some other markets where, you know, subsidizing costs of things by advertising. But I think it's a very interesting piece that there's potentially coming to the U.S. And when we talk about the evolution of retail and advertising, it's probably too early. Who knows what the impact of anything will be on here? But it is how we are as a society evolving and allowing this data to be used. The interesting point here is that glance, you know, this company isn't really in the EU because of some of the privacy concerns that are in the EU and the laws that don't allow it, but we will be able to do it in

the US. And the reason I thought this story was really, really interesting is the FTC did a report not too long ago about privacy and online usage and basically talked about the lack of regulation in the United States and how much data was available based on privacy and protecting consumer privacy and security in the U.S. and how little regulation was there. And, you know, they really did a great job in this report talking about the lack of regulation allowed companies to actually track you at a very granular level. And we were allowing people to do that, you know, by giving our consent. And we've talked about that on the on the podcast a few times as well as if you ever did take the time to read the

terms of services with a lot of a lot of these apps that we're using that are coupon based or shopping based. You know, especially if you're using like a fast food or, you know, those type of apps, you will be probably surprised at the level of information that you are allowing them to use, including anonymized location data. And so as we talked about a couple weeks prior on the podcast, you know, it only takes a slight change. And if we give them permission to use anonymized data, what happens if someone is nefarious or there's a mistake made to not make that data anonymous. So for everybody that is a smartphone user, my recommendation stays the same is, is I'm not suggesting we don't use these apps. I'm a big proponent of social media. I'm a big proponent of the apps. It's understanding what you're giving up.

Nothing is free. I say it all the time. If you're getting anything for free, they have to be monetizing it some way. Generally, they're monetizing it through your data, whether that means your surfing information and your behavior to provide ads or to gather data. That information is definitely, definitely valid. And then switching to the last topic, which is on TikTok. It's been in the news again about the U.S. government talking about the involvement in China and the risk that TikTok is posing. This is going to continue to come up, I think, and I'm not sure what the end tale will be, you know, a billion monthly users on TikTok.

And if you went to TikTok's terms of services, I am a TikTok user. You give them full access to your contacts and a whole bunch of other things on your phone. So for anybody who's listening on here that is in an investigative or law enforcement capacity, understand that if you're using TikTok, whether you realize it or not, you are giving them access to the contacts on your phone. And in some cases, you may even be giving them access to photos that you're not aware of. And by the way, this is not done in an epharious way. You're giving them access to it. So I think I continue to remind people to know what you're allowing people to do. And my last message is, if you really are in a strong investigative capacity or governmental capacity, there is some kind of conversation about having

a phone that you use just for work and a phone that you use that you don't crop that you use for personal use. Similar to what we talk about computers. I do have multiple phones personally. While that can be cumbersome sometimes, I know that my confidential things are separate than my social media things, and it does allow a peace of mind. And with that, I will turn it back over to Tony and Reed. All right. Well, thank you so much, Tom, and thank you so much, Tony. Great insights. Always, always much appreciated. And it really was an enjoyable time in Cleveland. And I know, Tony, you and I got to look at some of the pretty neat displays they had on guitars by of all, you all, our listeners, please, we always want your feedback, ideas. If you have guest ideas, questions, comments, they're always welcome at operations at lpresearch.org. We'll keep you posted.

A lot of interesting things coming out. And by the way, you just heard Tony a few moments ago go talking about the technology play we've got now uh some new models being deployed inside in the interior space we've also got lidar being installed inside in addition to some other technologies some ai technologies leveraging cpus but mostly the gpus from nvidia But we've got also a lot of AI plays. And bear in mind, again, our sensors are visual in the form of cameras, infrared cameras, LIDAR, two types of ground surveillance radar, thermal radar. So there's a lot going on in that space. But we've also got microphones. And with Skyla and others joining the LPRC, deploying those models inside and out.

The amount of oral signatures that they can pick up, the journey to harm, that we can see them as they're approaching our parking lot, entering, moving through, all the way up through the front door, interior space, up to that asset, that human, that money, that merchandise. And so integrating all those sensors, making better sense of them, knowing earlier and better what's going on, coming up with better and better prevention and protective solution sets are what the key are, which is what we'll be talking about on the next episode of Crime Science Podcast. So everybody stay safe, stay in touch. Thanks.

Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council and sponsored by Bosch Security. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more crime science episodes and valuable information at lpresearch.org. The content provided in the Crime Science Podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science Podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the Loss Prevention Research Council.