'Dear Jeff'
Amazon employees protest sale of facial recognition tech to law enforcement
A group of Amazon employees are pressuring company leadership to stop selling its facial recognition software to law enforcement and to stop providing services to companies who work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“We refuse to build the platform that powers ICE, and we refuse to contribute to tools that violate human rights. As ethically concerned Amazonians, we demand a choice in what we build, and a say in how it is used,” a group of Amazon workers wrote in a letter obtained by The Hill and posted on Amazon’s internal wiki addressed to CEO Jeff Bezos.

In their letter, Amazon workers criticized the company selling its facial recognition service – Amazon Web Services Rekognition – to law enforcement and government agencies, citing “historic militarization of police, renewed targeting of Black activists, and the growth of a federal deportation force currently engaged in human rights abuses.”

After the ACLU reported on Amazon providing facial recognition software to law enforcement, a slew of critics lined up to condemn Amazon’s work, including 40 civil rights organizations as well as members of Congress, including the entire Congressional Black Caucus. thehill.com

Supreme Court: Police can't use your phone to track you without a court order
Case stems from FBI's tracking of man involved in string of retail robberies
In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court gave a victory to privacy advocates Friday, ruling that police generally must have permission from a judge before they can get cell phone records to plot the movements of individual customers.

The decision requires police departments nationwide to get a search warrant in order to obtain telephone company data to track where a user has been. The technique is widespread, given that 95 percent of Americans own a cell phone.

The Supreme Court's ruling came in a case brought by a Michigan man, Timothy Carpenter, who was convicted of robbing a string of Radio Shack and T-Mobile stores after FBI agents used three months of cell phone records to show that he was near each store at the time of the crimes. He argued that because the FBI did not get a search warrant, that evidence, along with his conviction, should be thrown out. nbcnews.com

Winners & Losers in Supreme Court E-Commerce Tax Ruling
The Supreme Court handed a victory to the nation’s brick-and-mortar retailers on Thursday, overturning ruling that e-commerce marketers only had to collect sales tax in states where they had some sort of physical presence.

Physical retailers are clearly the big winners in the Supreme Court’s decision. (It’s estimated that not collecting sales tax gives online retailers anywhere from a 5% to 9.98% advantage, depending on the state, over traditional retailers in product pricing.)

The other big winners are the states, with the prior ruling causing states to lose annual tax revenues of up to $33 billion, Justice Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

Another winner - oddly enough - is Amazon. The online giant already collects a sales tax in every state that has one. But many of its pure-play competitors do not. Already challenged by Amazon’s price competitiveness and Prime appeal, they will be even more hard pressed to compete price wise given the new tax burden.

“The biggest winners are Amazon and large brick-and-mortar players,” Bryan Gildenberg, chief knowledge officer at Kantar Consulting, told Chain Store Age. “The ruling will greatly affect Amazon’s first-party competitors, such as Wayfair and Newegg.”

But “first-party competitors” are not the only losers. Indeed, small online-only businesses and mom-and-pop e-marketers are likely to be most impacted by the ruling. chainstoreage.com

Saboteur or Whistleblower?
Battle between Elon Musk and former Tesla employee turns ugly
Threat made to 'Shoot the place up'
Hours after Tesla sued its former employee on charges he had stolen company secrets, and days after chief Elon Musk had called him a saboteur, the Silicon Valley automaker made a startling claim. The company had received a call from a friend of the employee, Martin Tripp, saying he would be coming to Tesla's Gigafactory battery plant in Nevada to “shoot the place up,” according to a Tesla spokesman.

But Tripp, who says he became a whistleblower after seeing what he called dangerous conditions in the company's car batteries, told The Washington Post he had said no such thing. Emails exchanged that day between him and Musk, provided to The Post and confirmed by Tesla, show bitter words from both men but also Tripp saying he had “never made a threat.” Tesla's claims, he said, are “absurd! Insane is a better word.”

The sheriff's office in Storey County, where the Gigafactory is located, said Thursday that it had received information of a threat to security at the Gigafactory on Wednesday but determined “after several hours of investigation ... there was no credible threat.” Sheriff Gerald Antinoro said that names of all involved parties will be withheld while the investigation is ongoing. Tesla said it is increasing security at the Gigafactory as a precaution.

The showdown has exposed deep rancor at a tech giant famous for its head-turning cars, high-pressure workloads — and Musk, its unyielding boss. It also marks a new depth of suspicions from Musk, who recently sent companywide emails urging workers to stay vigilant against shadowy “outside forces,” saying, “Only the paranoid survive.”

It's rare for any major company, let alone one worth roughly $60 billion, to allow its internal warfare to play out in such a public way. It's even rarer for a billionaire leader like Musk — currently leading efforts to build self-driving cars, underground super-tunnels and advanced spacecraft — to serve as a soldier in the charge.

But the emails show Musk duking it out with Tripp, calling him a “horrible human being” who should be “ashamed” of himself and face “legal penalties.” washingtonpost.com

How to Shut Down Fuel Thieves
Theft modes at the pump continue to evolve over the years, meaning fuel retailers need to evolve their security to protect their fuel - and their customers.

At Gilbarco Veeder-Root's recent 2018 Retail & Fuel Technology Conference, held in Myrtle Beach, Product Marketing Manager Danny Seals discussed current theft modes, the effects on retailers’ brands, modes of security at the dispenser, future possibilities and more.

Seals also highlighted the market challenges with security, including sites becoming larger and the increasing needs around data security. csnews.com

Lottery thieves cheated California's scratcher game
Now retailers have new rules
A rash of thefts of California Lottery tickets in San Jose prompted the state this week to roll out a new system aimed at preventing store owners from paying out purloined scratchers.

The new system forbids a practice that had allowed retailers to begin selling tickets before they confirmed that they received their full order of scratchers.

A thief or thieves exploited that practice by stealing packages of scratchers en route to retail outlets, according to a June 8 message announcing the new policy by Lottery Chief of District Sales Randy Forrester. Retailers lost out because they wound up paying for Lottery tickets they did not receive and could not sell.

Multiple Lottery employees, speaking anonymously to The Sacramento Bee, said they had for years told their supervisors about their security concerns with the scratcher activation process. sacbee.com

PayPal to Acquire Simility to Expand Global Fraud Prevention and Risk Management Capabilities for Merchants
PayPal Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL) announced today that it has agreed to acquire Simility, a leading fraud prevention and risk management platform, for a purchase price of $120 million in cash, subject to certain adjustments. The acquisition of Simility will enhance PayPal’s ability to deliver fraud prevention and risk management solutions to merchants globally.

Following the close of the transaction, merchants on the PayPal platform will gain access to best-in-class fraud tools that can be customized to reflect the nuances of their businesses through their existing account management dashboard. These machine learning-powered tools, which dynamically adapt and evolve with each transaction, will enhance payment experiences for merchants and their customers by helping to reduce fraudulent payment activity and, in some cases, verifying transactions that may have otherwise failed. businesswire.com

Final Amazon Marketplace Executive Loses Many Of His Duties
Amazon’s Peter Faricy, the vice president of Amazon Marketplace, the remaining executive in the unit, has seen his role in the company reduced. CNBC, citing an internal document, reported that Faricy, who has worked at Amazon for twelve years, has no one reporting to him except for his assistant — many of the functions overseen by him and his former boss Sebastian Gunningham, who left the company for WeWork, have been shifted to the head of Amazon’s retail group Doug Herrington. CNBC noted its the latest change for Amazon Marketplace, which represents more than half of the eCommerce volume. pymnts.com

A ‘Hump Day’ Fourth of July Slows Down Consumer Celebrations, Spending Totals
Americans are expected to spend $6.9 billion on food for Fourth of July cookouts and picnics next month, according to the annual survey released today by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insight & Analytics. That’s down from last year’s record $7.1 billion as fewer people say they will turn out for the Wednesday holiday but is still the second-highest amount in the history of the survey and per-person spending is up. businesswire.com

UK: 6,000 jobs to go as House of Fraser store closures confirmed

Two years in, Brexit is hurting the UK

Toys 'R' Us is shutting down in Australia, too

UPS, Teamsters deal will keep the trucks rolling

Hong Kong retail sales on course to hit $61 Billion

These 2 Franchisees in Puerto Rico Survived Hurricane Maria and Lived to Tell What They Learned