Privacy-conscious activity trackers

The Array of Things project launched in 2014 as an effort to create a citywide network of connected sensor pods for urban research and management. A joint venture of Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago, the project also worked with the SmartChicago Collaborative, a community technology organization, to make sure that public concerns about the project were addressed. High among these were privacy and the use and re-use of collected data. That's why the project took numerous measures to ensure that data leakage was minimized—adopting a robust privacy governance structure, and employing edge computing techniques to reduce or eliminate the need to transmit data off the sensor allowing it to be discarded after analysis.

This last approach, in particular, has been embraced by many startups entering the market for sensing in the public realm, such as Numina and Starling Crossing. With awareness growing as signs about tracking in teh public realm become more informative and widespread, privacy-conscious activity trackers are likely to spread.

This suggests a future where people may seek out or avoid locations that offer different degrees of privacy protection in addition to the benefits gained from the montoring in the first place (e.g. security, climate control, etc.)