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If you're in Walnut Creek for two hours, the city is tracking you. Should you be worried?
https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/06/05/if-youre-in-walnut-creek-for-two-hours-the-city-is-tracking-you-should-you-be-worried/ETA. Mercury News is usually paywalled for me. This wasn't, so if you are, use the archive, Luke!
https://archive.is/vQd9j
Any time you spend two hours in Walnut Creek, local business leaders may be tracking you. The city’s Chamber of Commerce has paired with a tech company to clock visitors as they move in and out of the city.
The technology is from Arrivalist, a travel-industry-focused company with a platform that uses mobile location datasets to provide the Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Bureau with data on consumer behavior and market trends. The company collects information from cell towers, WiFi routers and other sources to track the location of mobile devices. (other sources?)
...
The Walnut Creek chamber says it’s working with the company in an attempt to determine how tourists spend their time in the city – and in the hopes it will help them attract more visitors, filling the roughly 1,300 rooms across eight hotels. The newest addition is the Hilton Garden Inn that just opened last year.
YES! THIS WILL INVITE THOUSANDS MORE TO ..... STAY THE HELL AWAY
In a meeting on Tuesday night, the business association’s reps showed how they had tracked participants of the Bay Area Spring Classic grade-school girls’ basketball tournament in early May; they received data on how many people came to the tournament, which cities or states they originated from, and how many nights they stayed.
The technology is from Arrivalist, a travel-industry-focused company with a platform that uses mobile location datasets to provide the Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce and Visitor Bureau with data on consumer behavior and market trends. The company collects information from cell towers, WiFi routers and other sources to track the location of mobile devices. (other sources?)
...
The Walnut Creek chamber says it’s working with the company in an attempt to determine how tourists spend their time in the city – and in the hopes it will help them attract more visitors, filling the roughly 1,300 rooms across eight hotels. The newest addition is the Hilton Garden Inn that just opened last year.
YES! THIS WILL INVITE THOUSANDS MORE TO ..... STAY THE HELL AWAY
In a meeting on Tuesday night, the business association’s reps showed how they had tracked participants of the Bay Area Spring Classic grade-school girls’ basketball tournament in early May; they received data on how many people came to the tournament, which cities or states they originated from, and how many nights they stayed.
GREAT! SURVEILLING MINORS.
JEFFREY WOULD BE PROUD!
Nicole Hankton, executive vice president of the Chamber’s visitor’s bureau, said the data is anonymous. No demographic details, names, phone numbers or addresses are included.
Bless them, they're saints!
This being California, I would expect the state not to subpoena data for certain medical facilities, rallies, protests, but a federal warrant? Hmmmm.
Crime scenes? Well, Google already collects that data (so why doesn't the chamber of commerce just buy Google's data?) and gives/sells it to LE. It was and probably sill is a geofence warrant, scooping up all location data near a point of interest.
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