Monday night, I came across a post in my Twitter feed regarding a face tracking system crashing in Oslo. It appeared to be a digital advertisement screen but then the software running the advertisement screen had crashed and was revealing a log of what the software was doing.

It turns out, the advertisement screen was using a camera to automatically profile everyone that passed by.

This reminded me of the increasing number of digital advertisement screens I’ve seen popping up around New York City.

The company behind this screen is called “Orb”, their website can be found here: http://orbscreen.com/ They have about 70 screens spread across Dublin, Cork and Galway. It's been discovered that approximately 10 of the screens are equipped with cameras, but they intend to increase this number soon.

Look closely at the two first pictures: there's a small camera that sits at the top of some of these screens. These cameras are used to track* and identify the behaviors of everyone who walks by — you’ll find no signs up to explain this. Children are also included in their profiling, which was discovered based on a conversation someone had with Orb over the phone and published.

'Track' is a word used in this context to describe a system’s ability to monitor and track changes in a pedestrian’s behavior from the moment they enter a cameras field of view to the moment they leave the cameras field of view. Which is exactly what this company is doing.

“Attention is the new currency” is the headline here. Your attention (and the meta-data associated with it) is being relayed to advertisers without your permission or awareness, and there is no way to opt–out.

This is the crux of problem. There’s no transparency, there is no obvious notice, and there’s no way to opt–out. This is an erosion of our privacy. I feel, this is unacceptable.

For instance, with platforms like Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, you have to actively accept their Terms of Service and Privacy Policies before using their product — and even then we’re vigilant regarding what we allow these platforms to do.

Ultimately, you can simply delete your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter account if you wish to opt–out.

While with these screens, things are a very different. There is nothing obvious to notify you that you’re being tracked or assessed, and there’s no way to opt–out. This is a real problem because it sets a precedent whereby we could lose our privacy. We have no choice here.

This is also a private company that’s tracking us without our awareness, not some kind of public service that can at least pretend it exists for the public good.

Even if data is somewhat obscured, it is still also possible to cross-reference and coagulate data to create profiling subsets. Data can be chopped up in different ways to easily identity people.

Orb is already profiling hundreds of thousands of Dubliners ever month, in great detail, without any apparent notice, and then they relay this data to advertisers.

They pride themselves on the fact that “Adblockers don’t apply”, which is a very clear way of saying: There is no way for people to opt-out.

So, what next? Racial profiling? Religious profiling? To what end? We need to talk about this and stop it.

We should all be able to move freely without being profiled, and if we don’t talk about that, it will continue to happen with increasing levels of resolution and accuracy.

Do we stand up to technology that or do we do nothing ?