If they don’t convey information why would they bother collecting it?
Because 4/5ths of the tech sector has been built on the back of absurdly low interest rates and gesturing to the future, shrugging your shoulders and saying "monetizing user data"?
Maybe to follow users during a single discrete trip through the space?
I realize these are public spaces we're talking about but to what extent are we willing to have our bodies and behaviors amplified, stored, copied, and otherwise scrutinized before we're allowed to feel some inherent right to personal privacy has been violated
If all the things to worry in the world, even in the narrow subsection of data privacy which feels like a 1st world human right, this particular case is not the one to worry about. Worry about how much Meta and Alphabet know about you, worry about the governments, but not the roadsign. Feels like a distraction
If they employed someone with a clicker to count the number of passers by would you feel that your privacy had been violated? What if they used a light beam that counted every time someone passed through it?
I had the same thought but then the kiosk could do that and they wouldn’t need to transmit the MAC to their server.
I guess mac address tracking is better than the facial recognition method K-Mart was using.