AoT POLICIES

Your data belongs to you.



Privacy & Data


We have no interest whatsoever in being "big brother".

We want to monitor urban environment & activity, not individuals. Our Executive Oversight Committee sees to that.

When reviewing comments we received from our public meetings, we found that the biggest concerns revolved around privacy and data protection.

Good. We encourage you to question anything that's looking to collect data around you.

Let's address those concerns.

Full Sensor Transparency


The sensors on the AoT nodes collect data about their environment. This includes carbon monoxide levels, humidity, air particles, and physical shocks.

It also includes sound intensity and street conditions, traffic flow, and events.

This requires the use of microphones and cameras.

Personally identifiable information (PII) is not collected by the microphones and cameras.

The computing technology provided by the Waggle allows any sound or images captured by the device to be processed at the source, rather than be stored as raw data.

A limited volume of images is collected but access to it is strictly limited and is for computer vision software development.

This is something that's strictly outlined in the Array of Things Operating Policies.


Additional Data Concerns


The nodes are programmed to communicate using cellular data, and only with the secure central database servers at Argonne National Laboratory.

They do not use Wifi or Bluetooth to communicate, so no personally identifiable information is captured.

This option was considered at the project's infancy, but we quickly dimissed it because:
  1. Research by other groups indicated that the measurements would be biased toward people who own connected devices and thus would not provide the most accurate indicator of foot traffic.
  2. It was clear that most people (ourselves included!) would be apprehensive about a system that could contact their personal devices in any way.
All data except for the images used for computer vision software development is published openly & free of charge on Plenar.io.

This allows individuals, organizations, researchers, engineers and scientists to study urban environments, develop new data analysis tools and applications, and inform urban planning.

Any changes to privacy, such as additional image processing algorithms or sensors that could potentially have privacy implications, require the approval of the City of Chicago and the AoT EOC.

Additionally, software, hardware, parts, and specifications will also be published as open source, to encourage participation and oversight from the developer community and public.

You can view the architecture and current sensor list of the nodes here. All of the software for the Wagle platform used by AoT is available at the Waggle-Sensor Github page and via API.