Real-time pedestrian data, FastCoExist notes, is quite valuable to all sorts of people: “city planners, business owners, police interested in crowd control.” Also, we would note, normal people trying to dodge pre-storm grocery lines.
Just checked the grocery store twitter feed to try and get pre-storm line conditions for @sarahmseltzer. My friendship knows no bounds.
— Lauren Kelley (@lauren_kelley) February 13, 2014
So, a startup called Placemeter is working on getting access to data from cameras all over New York City to watch you while you walk, FastCoExist says. They think they need about 3,000 feeds — right now they’ve only got 500.
How creepy is the creep factor here? We’re going to put it at a solid 7: Placemeter can follow you from building to building, but, the company says, it “has made it a policy to not attempt to identify individuals or use facial recognition.” But it could. Theoretically. Is this worth knowing when to head to the grocery store to skip the line?
