LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review: Episode 28 – Dr. Read Hayes, Tony D’Onofrio, and Tom Meehan

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

Dual flu & COVID-19 vaccine to start trials in Hong Kong. By 2021, there will be an estimated 1 billion CCTV cameras. In this episode, Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan, and Tony D’Onofrio discuss these topics and more, including IMPACT 2020, edge computing, live-streaming shopping in the U.S., Proud Boys, and Internet of Things security risks. The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review: Episode 28 – Dr. Read Hayes, Tony D’Onofrio, and Tom Meehan appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi everyone, welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we aim to 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. Be a leader in loss prevention by implementing integrated solutions that enhance safety, reduce shrink, and help to improve merchandising, operations, and customer service. operations, and customer service. Bosch Integrated Security and Communication Solutions spans zones one through four in the LPRC's zones of influence, while enriching the customer experience and delivering valuable data to help increase retail profitability. Learn more by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com. Welcome everybody to another episode of Crime Science, the podcast, the weekly episodes. And what we're going to be talking about today is we'll go around with my co-host, Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan, our producer, Kevin Tran,

talk a little bit about what's going on in the world and what people are trying to do about it. First looking again at the coronavirus, here we are. It's still heavily engaged. Infections are anywhere from up to stable to down, depending on the state, the county, the city, and who's doing the counting and how they're counting. But we're still heavily, heavily engaged in coronavirus fight here. It's affecting every part of our lives and business. virus fight here. It's affecting every part of our lives and business. We see on that macro scale,

um, emerging group that's come out. That's, um, trying to help everybody understand, looking at data that lockdowns are a pretty draconian approach that while they may have been merited for a while at the beginning, um, they're not advising, they're advising against them coming up, including some of the more significant epidemiologists at the WHO, the World Health Organization. There's been a letter signed by literally hundreds of epidemiologists, virologists, and other physicians and scientists also opposing future lockdowns. But it's just a very difficult time. There's a lot of things going on and people are trying to understand the harm that the virus does, both directly and indirectly. And we know that the harm that the lockdowns do can cause because of the isolation, the psychological effects, the diminished education that our kids are receiving, the effects on the elderly.

We know what it's doing to individuals' abilities to earn a living, using up their savings. There's disparities. I saw a physician group talking about the wealthier or homebound workers on a typical basis are fine. It's everybody else, all the essential workers that are paying dearly for that strategy or that tactic. So between everybody masking up, continuing the physical distancing and things like that, those are some of the track and trace where possible, going back in time, retrospective tracking and tracing, but also going forward. That type of tracing seems to be called for. But the research right now, it's been mixed again. Can somebody get reinfected or not? What's the immunity that's provided? Is it antibodies, is it T cells or other B cells that launch continuing antibodies and all these types of debates within the scientific community and the physicians that are involved in this. But regardless, with over 23 coronaviruses that have been studied over the years, evidently primarily in colds, does it look like there's long-term immunity in the same way that influenza may not have that?

It's not the same as, say, the measles or some other virus. It may have lifelong immunity once you're infected or vaccinated. So some of that debate, so that just means we need to continue to look at reduction, suppression of the virus, again, through masking and physical distancing. So we just can't transmit. A viremic person can't transmit the virus to another person or doesn't transmit as much of the viral components to that individual. So nothing's really changed there. That seems to reduce the probability of infection, the probability of a serious disease if one of us are infected.

Simple as that. Therapies, there are now several hundred continuing. We know over 600 have been submitted to the FDA. We know that mono and combi therapies are out there. There's been some significant findings so far in phase one and two trials as far as how these work, that this one combination therapy that's come out seems to provide really different mechanisms of action, but is keeping people out of the hospital or from serious disease. So there's some really promising therapies here, particularly in these monoclonal antibodies, a mono treatment, and then there's

one that combines two of these antibody mixtures together or therapies together. And they're also starting to understand there could even be another mechanism of action that they hadn't really realized that antibody or whatever we inject in, our immune system rises to the occasion, starts to generate antibodies and killer T cells and trying to suppress the disease. That may trigger Brady Kenan and all types of different cytokines, storms, and things like that. We may have an overreaction, too much inflammation, too much clogging of our breathing and affecting our all sorts of systems. It becomes very systemic, our brain, our circulatory system, and so on. But some of these therapies look like they also recruit new antibodies to be generated in themselves. So some exciting research looks very promising. The timeframe, again, may be mid next year.

By the time some of these are ready to go, they've made it through phase three trials. Hong Kong, they've come up with a dual action. It's just now entering or preparing to enter phase one trials, safety and efficacy, a dose ranging type studies that has dual action. In other words, it seems to affect not only coronaviruses and specifically the SARS-CoV-2 that we're dealing with, but also maybe at least one or more influenza or flu viruses. So that would be an interesting vaccination and could reduce some of that. Also, it can be delivered nasally.

And you'll see a lot of debate. I think we've talked about this earlier that if we're injected in our arm or a large muscle, the idea is to generate systemic immunity or at least the capability of our bodies to, if we're prepared and ready when we are exposed to that particular virus, to either completely suppress it and clear it, or at least to reduce the severity of the disease. In this case, now they're talking about the nasal spray may actually help sterilize that area where the virus enters and exits. So we may be less infectious ourselves once being vaccinated nasally, rather than if we're injected to the arm, we may become somewhat

immune to the virus, but we may still be transmitting it if we've got some of the RNA in our respiratory system. So stay tuned. A lot of interesting things. 11 viruses are in phase three trials. J&J is temporarily suspended. There is because of an unexpected illness in one of the test participants. This happens, we've seen that with the AstraZeneca out of the UK that they're doing with the University of Oxford. That trial resumed in Europe and then I believe now in the United States. So that's what happens when somebody who's in the trial gets an unknown or a suspected illness. They'll take a look at the data, see what they've got.

If they don't believe it's caused by the vaccine or by the placebo, if they're in that arm of the test, then they continue to proceed. to proceed. India and Iceland have contributed now large-scale infection studies, which will be helpful for the scientists, but mostly for the policymakers and practitioners out there looking at how much it spread. Iceland's particularly useful for all kinds of research, even in criminology we do, because of the small and pretty homogeneous society that they've got. And so they're able to study things. We use their genetics as well to understand the variance and how much of variance in somebody's behavior or their immunity or their other physiological elements are explained by their genetics versus home raising and so forth. But in that case, 44% with antibodies tested negative. And so that's an interesting and puzzling result. Two-thirds, though, had no symptoms of those that

were tested that were positive, had no symptoms. Two-thirds. So there was no human reinfection studies done. Obviously, those are considered to be unethical where somebody has been exposed, has gotten the illness, has cleared it, and then now some scientist is going to re-expose them to the disease. That type of challenge study we've talked about is frowned on right now unless until there are therapies available to recover somebody should they get serious disease. So a lot going on, looks promising, but again, the prevention seems to be the key. Hand washing continues to be a concern with maybe only a third to two-thirds of the population actually still regularly washing or sanitizing their hands and not touching their face, something that we know was drummed into us early on, but still plays a key role. It looks like airborne transmission is the primary mode, but that clearly, obviously, the phone lights are as well. So turning over to LPRC, we're looking at impact was last week. The feedback we've gotten has been excellent.

The content, the speakers that we got, the agenda, I think the timing, the way that the conference rolled out, all of we've gotten really, really good feedback. We were excited the way the Hopit platform that we used has progressed and our solution partners that sponsored the event. We can't do these. Nobody can do these without that critical sponsorship. They had their booths. There was a lot of engagement. I went to every booth. I saw retailers in every booth at some point, and they're talking and engaging. That seemed to go well. I think the interaction sessions went well. There was a lot of networking going on during those periods. So, you know, we're all living and learning here. I was excited, very, very proud of the LPRC team, you know, Kevin and Jesse, and I could go on, Kenna and Corey and Natanya and Logan, Diego, everybody just working day and night,

but working smart, not just hard. And then the LPRC impact committee that, that band that gets back together every year. Amazing stuff. The board of advisors getting in there and engaging. amazing stuff. The board of advisors getting in there and engaging. But what we want to do is steer you all to lpresearch.org, our website, lpresearch.org. You're going to see Kevin and team are going to be posting the on-demand videos from 2020 impact.

That content will be available starting next week, mid to late next week. So look forward to that. As we hear we are on the 13th of October, so look forward to the following week onward, having access to that. Working groups continue strong, a lot of engagement. We've got a 2020 election cluster call coming up with our members where we're going to go through potential election scenarios and what, who, and how, who might be triggered by whatever outcomes or confusion that results from the election. And then what the implications are as far as what they might do, where, when, and how. And then what are implications for protecting before and during.

Tom's on here. He can talk a little bit more about the LP Innovation Working Group, but they're part of the SOC Lab, the FusionNet concept with using a platform so that the retailers corporately can talk to each other before, during, and after dangerous weather events and dangerous social unrest events has been stood up. I think we've got a little over a dozen retail practitioners helping us beta test that. We're going to continue to simplify the actual platform itself and what it looks like so that it's very easy to use. But the idea, again, is corporate to corporate level. But in the field and where events might be happening, let's say a

hurricane is pending or has struck or a violent event, then the locals will also have one or more channels available that they can coordinate with each other and with law enforcement. And a benefit there looks like the corporate, instead of calling and tying up their team members so frequently during these events, they can monitor that channel and get a better idea of what's going on without bothering and taking their people off task. So go to their website, lpresearch.org, lpresearch.org, to find out more about what's going on there. LPRC Innovate, we now have two AI projects stood up with more on the way. We're engaging the three different student groups we talk about from engineering, computer science,

and from the Innovation Academy. So with no further ado, I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to friend and colleague, Tony D'Onofrio. Tony. Thank you very much, Reid. Let me start, first of all, by congratulating the entire LPRC team on impact. I think it was outstanding. The feedback that I received has been very, very positive. So really, congratulations on executing a very professional event. To give you an idea on the

popularity of it, a post that I did on day two in terms of encouraging people to attend reached almost 8,000 views. So congratulations, great event, and I'm looking forward to the playback to see the sessions that I also missed. Let me now switch to some industry data in terms of what's going on out there. Let me start with some new research on how many times each of us is on a security camera during the week. CNBC reported that by 2021, there will be an estimated 1 billion CCTV cameras in the world. 10 to 18% of these will be in the U.S. CBS News reported the U.S. has at least one security camera for every 4.6 people

compared to one camera for every 4.1 people in China. And China has a larger population, and that's why the density is a little bit lower. A study by safety.com found that the average American is filmed 14 times while in the home or in the neighborhood, 160 times while driving, that was by far the largest, 40 times while at work, and 24 times while shopping or running errands. So for a total, each of us on average is on camera 238 times a week some security camera is watching us so I found that very interesting also very interesting and it ties into some of the discussions at impact COVID-19 has opened multiple new services such as buy online pick up in store, or as commonly known, focus. Less than 15% of retailers had these new services optimized prior to COVID-19. And the problem with these services, they actually cost retailer money.

So if they're not optimized, they decline margin. So to give you an idea, it actually has been measured. If you don't optimize these services, buy online, return to store, we lose 5.5% in margin. Local delivery from store, if it's not optimized, you lose 8% in margin. Buy online, pick up in store, you lose 5.5% in margin. And buy in store, pick up at another store, you lose 6% in margin. So to address this, what is happening already, there's a major spike in new technologies being deployed at the services. The two most important are microservices architecture,

which are going to spike by 750%, and edge computing, which is going to spike 460%. And edge computing is one of the most critical one. When this question was asked, when edge computing used, how much more likely are retailers to have optimized each customer journey prior to COVID-19 surge impact? And this is the impact. If you do optimize them,

buy online return in in-store, we're plus 127%. Buy online, pick up in-store, plus 139%. Buying for pick up at another store, plus 128%. Edge computing tied to artificial intelligence, the key technology to the Innovate program. So stay close and follow that closely. A couple other instrument data pieces from the Wall Street Journal this week. Instantly, data pieces from the Wall Street Journal this week. One is online sales grew 44.5% in the second quarter compared to 2019,

and they now make up 16% of all USA retail sales. Foot traffic in stores is down by an average of 14% from July to the second week of September compared to last year, according to some mobile location data. Also, the Wall Street Journal had an article this week on live streaming. I actually talked about live streaming based on a blog that I wrote that I shared on this podcast in terms of the highlights. And again, just as a refresher, live streaming in China grew 453% in the last three years and is now an e-commerce channel valued at $129 billion. And guess what? It's now coming to the U.S. according to a new Wall Street Journal report that just came out. CoreSight Research predicts that live streaming shopping events in the U.S. will generate $25 billion by 2023. And as an example, again, not as developed here,

but go back to China in terms of what's possible, Tommy Hilfiger, which is in one of their live streaming events in China in August, attracted 14 million views and sold out 1,300 hoodies in two minutes. So right now, Amazon, Facebook, and Instagram have launched our testing live sales platform. One consumer that used it said, I loved it. I love the styling advice. It was almost like having a personal shopper.

So check out my blog on live streaming to understand the concept, as it's critical to apparel, especially because, as I said again on this podcast, apparel is not going to recover to 2019 levels until the distant year of 2023. So good news in terms of new models being tried and artificial intelligence, and again, the importance of LPRC. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Tom. Well, thanks, Tony. Thanks, Reid. And I am driving, so I apologize for the background noise.

But in the new world, we're always virtual. We're always moving. You know, I just want to start off by saying we don't prep for these and how aligned we are. So I think you'll see kind of crossover in everything we talk about. I'll start with what we're doing with the LPRC Innovations Group and the SOC or FusionNet. I really like the word FusionNet

because it is different than our traditional virtual SOC. As we mentioned, we have about a dozen members right now and we are looking for more people to get involved. So if you reach out to myself or anybody at the LPRC to learn how you can get involved, that was the time to do that. And we do have the first iteration of the setup up and running with some key topics surrounding violence, civil disturbance, weather events. surrounding violence, civil disturbance, weather events. And we're really honing in on what we're going to focus on. As we discussed earlier, we will have somewhat of a live SOC for the election in and around the events that occur. So I think stay tuned for that.

And probably by next week's podcast, we'll have a much more formal update. Again, I encourage any listener, regardless of who they're with, if they're interested in being involved, to reach out. We are still looking for a few folks, really hoping to get folks that are in the open source intelligence world, the intelligence or the threat assessment realm for retail or risk management. Right now, that's where we're focused. We're not really on the investigative side of the world right now. But if you have an investigator with your organization that's heavy into social media listening or open source intelligence gathering,

this is a great tool to utilize. Switching gears, and I won't get too far into it, but I think Tony and I are completely aligned. There is this new live streaming, and I think about a year ago I wrote an article about the future and predicted this before COVID, not because I'm that smart, but because the news has been saying it for some time. With these live streaming shopping events, there is risk that's posed. And the risk is that anybody can do it.

So right now, Tony and myself can set up a storefront online, create a really robust live streaming event and not ship merchandise. So it's important that when you're looking for deals that you stay with reputable brands or people you recognize, the social media networks allow anybody to live stream, anybody to set up these marketplaces. And just yesterday, there was just a rash of what I would say are all good intention marketplaces that were following suit with some of the bigger brands. The bigger brands. The bigger brands will continue to do this. And I think it was Forbes or Wall Street Journal that commented, very QVC or home shot like when you look at the way that these are set up.

Next thing I wanted to talk about is the Proud Boys. So I think I was reached out a couple of times during LPRC Impact, which again was great, Reid. I know that we're not to be repetitive here. I had the opportunity to do a session at the end of the day on day one. And to my surprise, we kept even we were the last session and we still had about 270 people tuned in, which is fantastic. A lot of great questions. We focused on digital offenders. And we talked a little bit about extremist groups and some of the things and how they're utilizing social media

and Telegram and some of these messaging apps. So I got a couple offline questions about the Proud Boys. So I did a little research after the debate, and this became a very well-known name. But it's important to know just how social media can affect things. There really are only about 600 members of the Proud Boys that you can find globally. And this is not a big group. It has a very interesting past. I'm going to write an article about it and I'll share details of that when I'm done with it. But it actually was founded by the starter of Vice Media. Yes, the real Vice Media. The founder of Vice Media is the person who started the Proud Boys.

It's a very interesting story from a sense that when you really read it, it's interesting at a comical level of how ridiculous some of the things that the Proud Boys say and do. And I am not speaking side politically here. It's actually just the way it came about and uh the founder of vice is this uh kind of really interesting uh has this kind of i'm trying to think of the right word but he talks about ironicism and kind of makes comments and changes them to comedic when he's not actually being comedic. And that is how

the Proud Boys started. So one of the real keys I just wanted to mention on the podcast here is when you think of the media and everybody talking about it, you're talking about a group that, while it's probably a little bit more organized than others, has almost no membership in relationship to the total population of even a very, very small city or town. And that's based on a lot of research that was done not just by myself but by other people in the community. But it shows what the power and potential of social media has. A group with less than 1,000 members gets mentioned on a presidential debate because of the emphasis social media has. So I think when we think through how we're using social media and going back to what we started with, this fusion net is more important than ever because it allows us

to really validate and work as a group to identify, is this actually a threat? Regardless of the highest level of people mentioning it, is it actually a threat to of the highest level of people mentioning it is it actually a threat to us will it disturb our business um and the short answer related to the proud boys is it's not i do think that their membership will grow based on the comment but it is um still i mean when you compare it to any of the other any of the other extremist groups out there um they're almost non-existent. There are more media folks following them than actual members.

So I thought it was pertinent to say that because that came up multiple times after my session at Impact as, is this a risk? What's going to happen? We hear this group has guns and so on and so forth. And there's really no data to support that this group is even a remote threat.

So just wanted to wrap that that way. And then I think Tony also hit heavily on the devices on the edge. And I was going to talk a little bit about IoT and the influx of IoT devices on the edge and the importance to just make sure that regardless of if you're buying a consumer device, if you're buying a commercial device, to take a little bit of time

to look through the manufacture of these devices because these devices are being made by the billion, not by the million right now. And IoT devices by design in the consumer world are made to be very easy and seamless, which allows for risk. And usually when it's super easy and super quick to set up, that means that there are some potential cybersecurity risks. Now that's a general statement. I'm not suggesting that you become paranoid about it, but if you're buying an off-brand or a non-main brand product, it's worth the due diligence to look at what type of software patching or updates they have available.

And that goes the same as a commercial device. The edge devices are arguably going to be more through the roof than they ever have. They're everywhere. And for retailers today, I don't know that you're going to see many devices in the future in the retail sector that doesn't have edge computing on it. And the challenge here is making sure that you have a device that's easy to patch, easy to protect, and easy to monitor.

That's all I have for today. Over to you, Reed. All right. Thanks so much, Tom. Stay safe out there. I appreciate everybody getting on today, listening. We do. We do want you to share lpresearch.org. Send it to

operations at lpresearch.org by email. Please share your thoughts, your suggestions, your critiques, anything that you would like to see or hear, what you'd like to know about LPRC and how to get involved, engaged with us, our events, our knowledge center, our webinars, you know, our cluster calls, our working groups. All of those are there. They're available. We're working with over 65 major retail chains. We're working with almost 80 of the leading technology companies. And we're working with some of the major product manufacturers like Procter & Gamble and so forth. So we'd love to get you engaged as well. That's why we're working with some of the major product manufacturers like Procter & Gamble and so forth. So we'd love to get you engaged as well.

That's why we're here. We were stood up by retailers and we are driven by retailers to serve their needs to help suppress, reduce, mitigate theft, fraud, and violence. But mostly to do all that to provide a much better work and shopping experience. So with that, I want to thank Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Ian and Kevin Tran, our producer. I want to thank you all and please be safe out there. Signing off from Gainesville. 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 Laws Prevention Research Council.