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October 8, 2002

Seeing is Believing

Should data generated by video surveillance be used for commercial purposes?

by Justin Kestelyn

For those of you who didn't catch the Steven Spielberg science fiction film Minority Report this summer — and a great film it is — one of its more dazzling strokes of futuristic technology is the presence of ceiling-mounted retinal scanners in every public space. The scanners are apparently networked into supercharged CRM systems, because every time a character is in close physical proximity to a digital billboard or walks into a retail store, customized animated advertising, complete with first-name-basis copy, blares from a nearby screen. The implications for impulse buyers are frightening.

Whether you think this idea is very scary or very cool depends on which side of the "marketing horizon" you live on. Regardless of your view, you should understand one thing: We're already under more routine surveillance, as we go about our lives, than any people in the history of the world. How long will it be before that surveillance technology infrastructure is put to work for commercial purposes? And at what cost?

A Camera in Every Garage

First, the facts:

Privacy advocates claim that 10,000 surveillance cameras are perched atop poles on Manhattan sidewalks right now. An organization called the Institute for Applied Autonomy has taken as its mission to design a computerized map of these locations so that surveillance-sensitive New Yorkers can avoid them on the way to their destinations.
There are 2.5 million cameras deployed across Great Britain right now, including 10,000 in London's financial district, ostensibly to discourage IRA terrorist attacks.
In June 2001, the city of Tampa Bay, Fla., deployed video surveillance cameras in conjunction with face-recognition software in order to literally pick known criminals out of a crowd. (According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the software never identified a single face correctly or led to one arrest, and the program was shut down two months later.) Similar systems are already deployed, or are being deployed, in airports around the country.
As we all know, ATM machines, highways, retail stores, and many other public spaces have been under video surveillance for years.

Obviously, most of these systems are deployed for the purposes of law enforcement, and increasingly, for homeland security. But should these systems, and data they generate, ever be used by retailers and their ilk for customer analytics purposes?

We're much closer to that possibility than you might think. In August, a company called Brickstream Corp. released software that enables retailers to recognize, track, and analyze customer behavior captured through in-store video cameras. By coupling behavioral data with transaction data, Brickstream claims that its analytic engine can help retailers optimize product placement, store layout, promotion effectiveness, and customer service. Brickstream's technology is attracting positive attention in the retail industry; it counts billion-dollar retail solutions company Retek as one of its partners and resellers.

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If that's the direction in which we're headed, what safeguards should be put in place? For example, as Gartner Group's Jackie Fenn asked in an April research note, should insurance companies have access to license plate numbers observed on busy throughways? To take that question one more step, would it be fair game for your auto insurance company to cancel your policy because your vehicle, as identified by its license tag, was observed running a red light? Similarly, would you be comfortable about store personnel not only knowing your name minutes after your arrival in their store but also having a "predictive" idea that you're not there to shop, but to browse?

Look Ahead

These questions are rhetorical for the moment, but the time will soon come when they transcend the academic. Which side of the issue will you be on?